


clutching a map of dreams

by raspberrybeanie



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Final Fantasy X Fusion, FFX-typical levels of violence (as non-graphic as possible), Gen, M/M, Slow Burn, jonmartin but make it a jrpg from the 00s that was very formative for me, many characters playing other roles. i may tag them. i may not.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29439621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberrybeanie/pseuds/raspberrybeanie
Summary: Martin wasn't expecting his city to be attacked by a harbinger of death and destruction, and he certainly wasn't expecting to be flung a thousand years forward through time. Stranded in every way from everything he knows, he crosses paths with Jon, a summoner embarking on a pilgrimage to gain the power to defeat the death that plagues this unfamiliar and stagnant future.Martin joins the pilgrimage as one of Jon's guardians through nothing more than chance. It's not like his presence there is going to change anything that much.Right?( i am literally incapable of restraining myself from writing fusion aus. it's the jmart ffx fusion au you never asked for, babey )
Relationships: Everyone & Everyone, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 23
Kudos: 14





	1. otherworld

**Author's Note:**

> you know when your good good friend comes to you, a known AU warlock, and makes the mistake of saying the words "i was replaying ffx and i'm just here like: where's my obligatory jonmartin au"? that's the story of how this monstrosity came to be. ao3 user [neraiutsuze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/neraiutsuze/pseuds/neraiutsuze) is the wind beneath my wings and this AU would not exist without her and her constant beta-ing, cheerleading, and general willingness to yell abt plot points and nonsense.
> 
> this is going to be... a LONG fic, folks, and despite having a decent backlog already i am purposefully not holding myself to an update schedule with it. hopefully this will still be an enjoyable ride both to those who know FFX and those who do not! as is my custom i will put more detailed content warnings in the footnotes of each chapter, but before we dive into the fic itself i wanna give more general warnings for what this story will involve for those who would rather not engage with certain themes and don't want to get 30 chapters in before they realise what's up. 
> 
> SO: as a ffx au (and without giving spoilers away for a 20 year old game), this story is gonna get super involved with themes of **death, existential horror, sacrifice, and abuse of power on both a personal and institutional level (including that abuse of power being leveled against an in-universe marginalised ethnic group).** it should be nothing more heavy than what either canon deals with and if you are able to handle listening to TMA itself there shouldn't be anything that blindsides you _too_ much here, but please consider if you're in a position to engage before reading!

The night that the sky tears open, Martin is sitting on the roof.

It’s been a favourite spot of his for years. Slip up the back stairwell of his building, follow it spiralling around all the way to the top. Through the door that’s meant to be locked but has been _just_ out of alignment enough for years to make it easy to shimmy open without the key. Through a small gap between the two run-down domes crowning the old building, and round into the tiny alcove behind. 

It’s quiet up here, which is part of why Martin likes it so much. The rest of Zanarkand _isn’t_ quiet, as a rule. Even in his tiny apartment, there’s still plenty of noise that bleeds through the walls on either side, or through the ceiling from the family of five that live upstairs. And while it’s nice, in a way, sometimes, to have the reminder that there are always other people in this city just going about the business of living their own lives, sometimes… 

Well, sometimes Martin just wants the quiet. Sometimes old habits die hard.

That, and the view from his apartment isn’t nearly as good as the one from up here. Martin’s apartment building is old; the windows are all tiny things, designed for keeping the glaring midday sun out as much as possible. Practical things. They weren’t designed with the view in mind.

The roof, though, that’s a different story. 

Martin doubts the people who built the place had a notion of anybody spending time on the roof, which naturally means that the view up here at night is stunning. The sweeping expanse of Zanarkand stretching out above and below, the domes and spires reaching up in great, elegant urban tangles that rise in layers higher and higher the closer they get to the city centre. The great arc of water cascading over the blitzball stadium, the smaller falls that pour off the edges of the round floating platforms that support the city's more fashionable districts. Seen at sunset, when the last rays of light make all of that water look like shining crystal burning with liquid fire, before the day fades and the lights of the city slowly start to turn on, one by one – it’s beautiful.

Zanarkand isn’t always beautiful, but seen like this, on that cusp of one light trading places with another, it may just be one of the most beautiful sights to have ever existed.

Tonight should be no different from any other night. Tonight isn't any different from any other night - right up until the precise moment that Martin sees, with crystal clarity, a great wave of ocean water rise up and sweep towards the city.

Martin’s first impulse is to run – but where to? The wave is massive, a colossus towering above even the highest spire on the highest platform, above even the water kept suspended in its arcing path over the city. Where can he run from that? Even if he makes it down the stairs and out the building in time, there’s no escaping something that vast. He’s going to drown. The entire city’s going to drown.

The wave stops.

Pressed against the wall on the roof of his apartment building, terrified out of his mind, head still spinning with thoughts of how the sea had been _calm_ , completely _calm_ until only a few seconds ago, and how he really, really doesn’t want to die – Martin starts to wonder if he’s dreaming.

The wave hangs there for an instant, suspended mid-motion like a frozen image from a spherecast.

Then it _changes._

The water reshapes itself, slow and fluid, sculpting itself into a giant sphere that floats over the city. Almost like a blitzball pool – except there’s no machina powering this monstrosity, no spinning gyros forcing the water to remain in that shape, and not even the pool in the stadium is this large when it’s filled. Martin could swear that the buildings closest to the edges of the sphere _warp_ , turning fuzzy like the blurred edges of a child’s watercolour painting.

For a moment, he wonders if maybe he fell off the roof. Maybe he’s lying on the ground right now, and this is some kind of bizarre dying vision.

_It’s not a vision._

Martin doesn’t know where the thought comes from, but he knows it’s true. However impossible this is, however unreal it is – it’s really happening. 

The sphere of water convulses. There’s a booming sound, quiet at first but getting louder and louder in Martin’s ears, and as the sound spreads, there’s another right behind it, this one the sound of splintering metal and cracking, groaning masonry. His ears still ringing, Martin can only watch in growing horror as smoke starts to rise from the collapsing skyline closest to the sphere. 

What is _happening_ out there?

Another convulsion, and now a flash of dark shapes come shooting out from somewhere within the water. Impossible to tell if they’re even _aiming_ for anything – Martin's eyes catch some crashing down near the dockside, more plunging into buildings in clouds of dust.

The shapes start _moving_ , and his stomach turns as Martin realises that the things are _alive._

The sounds of sirens and distant screams carry on the wind. Martin's sure his legs are going to give way at any moment – but a blur of movement draws his eye, and he _has_ to move closer to the edge of his little alcove for a better look.

Because - if he’s not completely lost it – there’s someone out there _fighting_ those creatures.

It’s impossible to make out details from this far off, but the stranger is armed with a sword half as tall as they are, and is making short work of the dark, buzzing shapes and writhing limbs with movements that are as graceful and fluid as they are impossible. In a series of quick slashes, they effortlessly cleave the ones ahead clean in two, before circling around to the larger one behind and dealing it several punishing blows in quick succession. 

Martin rubs his eyes, and the figure is gone.

More alarmingly, the gargantuan orb of water still hanging in the sky looks closer than before. A _lot_ closer.

He’s got to get out of here.

That’s the first thing Martin thinks, and then with a jolt of new fear he remembers all the other people in the building, and he knows: first, he has to warn them.

Martin scrambles back through the gap between the domes, spends an agonisingly long few seconds frantically trying to get the door to the stairwell open, and then hurls himself through it, racing down the first spiral as fast as he can without breaking his neck.

There’s an emergency switch on every floor, ostensibly for if a fire were ever to break out, but Martin figures this situation is worth at least ten fires. The switches are old tech – still _sphere-activated_ of all things – but they still work just fine. Martin _hopes_ they still work just fine.

He shoves his entire weight at the door that leads to the top floor landing until it bursts open with a loud bang, almost trips over his own feet racing for the emergency panel. He slams his elbow into the glass panel covering the softly glowing sphere set in the wall and reaches in to grab it, letting out a small sound of pain when a jagged edge of glass nicks the side of his hand. There’s another recess in the wall to the right - Martin wastes no time, setting the sphere inside it with fumbling hands and praying he doesn’t drop it.

The effect is immediate: as soon as the sphere slots in place, a loud, grating sound blares through the corridor, building in pitch and intensity until it makes Martin want to grind his teeth. Within seconds, someone's sticking her head out of her apartment door, almost wrenching the thing out of place in the process.

“What the hell’s going on out here?” she hollers over the din of the alarm, scowling at him, and oh, Martin doesn’t have _time_ for this, he really doesn’t.

“Big - _thing_ outside!” he manages to shout back over the noise. He tries to use his arms in a futile attempt to show her just _how_ big it is. Other doors are opening now, more people come to see what the fuss is. “Huge, round water thing heading this way – you heard that, that explosion noise a few minutes ago? You’ve got to leave, we, we’ve all got to leave _right now!_ ”

Her eyes widen. “Shit, like on the spherecast?”

As soon as he sees she’s got the message, Martin turns and runs for the stairs.

“Just get everyone out!” he calls back over his shoulder, hoping she hears him.

The sound of voices rising in panic as word spreads dogs his steps, but Martin’s already stumbling down to the next floor. Here, too, there are already doors open, the sharpest of his neighbours already making their way towards the nearest flight of stairs. Martin gives a heavy bang to every door that’s still closed when he sprints past, and tries to hurry along the people still standing in their doorframes wondering what’s happening.

Down another floor, and another. Like most buildings in Zanarkand, the one Martin lives in is decidedly round, and so by the time he hits the third floor he’s starting to feel a bit dizzy, not to mention out of breath. 

Down here, the alarm’s been going for along enough that most people have got the message – the corridor's crowded, with people pouring towards the stairwells as fast as they can. Martin still catches sight of a couple of people who’ve made time to stuff a bag as full to bursting as they can, and one older man clutching a heavy trophy like his life depends on it, his face twisting in anger when anyone tries to tell him to leave it behind. 

In the crush of people, a few children start crying. Martin holds his breath, feeling people pushing on all sides, and lets the sea of frightened faces carry him towards the next flight of stairs. Someone stumbles ahead of him, and Martin reaches out on instinct, catching them by the arm and hauling them upright before they can trip and take everyone in front with them, or be crushed underfoot.

“Come on, come _on_ , keep moving!” he shouts, raising his voice as loud as he can to compete with the wailing alarm.

He doesn’t know if anyone hears him, and maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. When Martin spills out onto the street with the rest of them, with more still behind, he gulps down the outside air and stumbles away from the door to let everyone else get out, trying desperately to get his bearings. He’s not even sure what side of the building he ended up coming out on. It's all chaos and confusion, panicked people fleeing in every direction with no thought for anything besides escape.

Until it isn’t. Everything goes silent, the screams and the sirens stop, and Martin swears that everything just - _freezes._

A tall man, his face in the deep shadow of a large, rich purple hood, gold talismans strung from many cords on his belt, stands in the middle of the road. Martin can't make out any of his features, but even so - he could swear the man's staring right at him.

“It begins,” he says, and vanishes.

Sound and movement crash back into the world with the force of a fierce ocean wave.

In the corner of Martin's eye, light shifts suddenly. 

He looks up. He doesn’t scream – only because what he sees robs him of any breath to spare. 

Above him, the great bulk of the giant sphere floats suspended, warping the air around it into that soft, buttery-edged haze from before. This close, the effect makes Martin’s eyes water.

The asphalt in front of him cracks as something pierces it from above, and this time Martin does scream.

When the dust from the impact clears enough to see, he finds himself face to face with the buzzing, twitching creatures he last saw from a distance. They’re even worse up close; taller than Martin, with chitinous, spindly legs and stiff, quivering wing-like appendages that remind him of seashells.

Martin tries to scramble back, but a chunk of rubble catches at his foot and pulls him down, wrenching his ankle with a bright blossoming of pain. The things move toward him with a low, droning sound; the lump of rock Martin flings at them goes wide, his already poor aim thrown off by the throbbing pain in his ankle. 

Martin braces himself to just throw himself to the side if they lunge, when a bright burst of light and loud crack abruptly scatters the lot of them into a lazy group of soft, pastel-coloured lights.

“Can you stand?”

The voice is deep and weathered with experience. Martin squints up through the blue afterimage behind his eyes; a lanky, wiry man in a beaten greatcoat stands before him, his grey hair cropped close to his scalp and his dark skin lined with a life hard-lived. 

Martin’s never met this man in his life, but the giant sword is a dead giveaway. This is the same man he saw running circles around these monsters up on the roof.

“I – I think so,” Martin says shakily after a moment of catching his breath. He tries to get to his feet, hissing when he puts too much weight on his bad ankle too soon. “Shit. Think I rolled my ankle going down.”

“I can do something about that, but then you need to run,” the swordsman says. 

So far, he’s been watching the street around them, the rippling shadow of water above them, and he hasn’t stopped to look at Martin at all. Satisfied that no danger is imminent for the moment, the swordsman turns to look at him now – and flinches back like someone who’s seen a ghost, a spasm of anger seizing his face for an instant between the shock.

“This cannot be!” he rasps. 

Martin fights the urge to shrink and stumble away as best he can, taking his chances with the monsters on his dodgy ankle.

“S – sorry, I – what?” he manages. 

The swordsman studies his face for a few seconds with a fierce expression. Whatever he finds pulls from him a soft gasp, his eyes widening once more. The man’s jaw clenches as he swallows, clearly having a hard time mastering _some_ kind of anger. Martin finds himself anxiously standing there, distant, panicked screams from other parts of the city echoing in his ears, wondering what he could have done to this stranger, hoping that it wasn’t bad enough to get him killed.

“I see,” the swordsman says at length, his voice even once more. There’s still thunder in the set of his eyebrows, but he regards Martin now with a look he can’t fathom. There’s something like wonder in it, and something, perhaps, all too much like pity. 

On reflection, Martin would rather deal with the anger.

“It seems fate has brought us both to a strange turn,” the swordsman says. He looks up towards the underbelly of the great sphere, scrutinising it. Martin realises that it hasn’t moved at all since the man saved him. 

Wait, is the monstrous calamity after this stranger?

“Alright then,” the swordsman nods out of nowhere. He reaches out to Martin with one hand, bringing the other in an odd gesture before him, as if gently parting the air in front of his chest. 

Light glows at the tips of the man’s fingers. Martin feels a rush of warmth flow through his body and the next instant it hits him - his ankle stopped throbbing. He glances down at his injured hand; the cut he got from the building’s stupid antiquated alarm system is gone as well.

“The danger will pass from this city once I cross its threshold,” the swordsman announces, as though that’s a perfectly ordinary thing to say, as though he didn’t just heal Martin’s injuries with a kind of magic that nobody in Zanarkand has been able to do with that much ease in hundreds of years.

“H— Hang on!” Martin protests, “Are you saying you brought this thing here?!”

“Not intentionally,” the man says. He sounds sincere, deep regret in his voice. “But I’m not from this city. I fear that Sin knows I don’t belong here, and is trying to ensure my removal the only way it knows how.”

There are so many questions Martin wants to ask, but the swordsman’s face is suddenly lit from above with a sickly orange glow. Martin looks up, his eyes struggling to focus past the blurring and warping of the air, and lets out a strangled gasp.

The thing bearing down over their heads doesn’t even look like water anymore. It’s like – like a tear in the very air itself, a jagged hole ripped open in the sky to reveal something behind that burns with a menacing fire. Glimpses of rough, craggy skin warp in and out of the haze, and something else, something that looks disturbingly like a giant, glassy eye.

The buildings around them are crumbling apart, gradually imploding in fragmented pieces before being drawn up into this horrifying maw, stretching out thinner and thinner until they vanish completely. There’s a dead weight to Martin’s limbs, to the give of his ribcage – he feels like he can’t get a proper breath in suddenly. He wants to run – does he ever want to run – but he can’t lift his feet.

The swordsman must be in the same bind. He grimaces, his face already distorting into nightmarish proportions, and looks at Martin with an intensity that’s still somehow reassuring, even through the blind terror. 

“Very well. Perhaps this is what's needed,” he says in a low undertone – and that’s the last thing Martin knows before the world tears apart into a searing flare of light – and a deep, crushing darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter:  
> \- explosions, wanton destruction  
> \- imagery evocative of a natural disaster  
> \- evacuation  
> \- claustrophobia  
> \- mild injury  
> \- unreality  
> \- ffx canon-typical levels of jrpg violence
> 
> thanks for reading!


	2. the djose shore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin has a dream, and wakes up far from home.

Martin remembers – he thinks he has a dream.

In the dream, he’s alone. It’s dark. He might be moving, dragging through something cold and heavy that pulls at his limbs and pushes down on all sides. Water? That can’t be right, he sees buildings. Slipping past like they’re the ones moving and he’s frozen in place over them. There’s no one else. Just empty buildings. He’s all alone. He’s so tired of being alone.

The buildings don’t move anymore. He’s floating, and there’s some kind of light below, and he wants to go towards it so he does. Some kind of black shape down there on a roof. A bird? A great, big black bird, and the closer he gets the bigger the bird is, the more eyes it has, shiny black opals peeling open down the centre of flight feathers, and then the bird isn’t a bird anymore,

It’s a person

Dressed head to foot in black, blurring at the edges, standing on the edge of a roof with all that light below, and then their eyes meet,

Something _flashes_ —

It’s still a person, still blurred at the edges, but it’s a different person, he can tell. Bigger. Taller? With the light it’s hard to see. There’s a door on the roof and when Martin pushes it open he’s in a room that smells familiar, echoey voices raised harsh enough to carry up through the floor, sound of a door being wrenched open. The air from outside smells damp; it’ll rain tonight.

_I’ll take my chances with the monsters out there over the ones in here, thanks—_

Wait. That’s not how it happened.

“That was a different time,” says the man with the purple hood standing at the foot of the stairs.

Martin feels lightheaded. The rain smell is full of salt, a gentle rush of back and forth sound. His eyes feel heavy, his head feels heavy – and then he feels nothing at all.

~ ⛼ ~

The first thing he’s aware of is the sound of waves.

It’s a gentle sound, but an insistent one. The longer it goes on, the more it drags him up out of the darkness, and closer to – well, everything else. His limbs feel like someone’s tied an entire bloody skytrain to them. And there’s something coarse and grainy coating everywhere he can feel himself touching. 

Sand?

“Hey, you alright there mate?”

Martin blinks unwillingly into consciousness. Everything is both too _bright_ and too _beige_ all at once. The sun overhead shines right into his eyes and he lets out an involuntary hiss, screwing them back up tight. When he dares to crack them both open again a second or two later, everything looks blurred. There’s a vivid purple-and-green smear of colour in amongst all the beige tones that seems to have a voice.

“Can you hear me?”

It sounds concerned. Martin struggles to remember how words work, making a few feeble attempts at sound. The inside of his mouth feels like it might have got coated in cold, wet sand as well. A stubborn, pressing pain in the side of his face at least explains why everything’s so blurry; his glasses must have come askew. 

The blurry voice – which must belong to some sort of person, surely – is calling for someone else now, muttering words that Martin can only half-hear. Something about toxin and healers and something about a cart, before the soft crunch of feet on wet sand retreats away from him.

Why’s he lying on sand, anyway? Last thing he remembers, he could have sworn he was on the roof. There’s no reason for him to be face-down with waves tugging at his legs—

Wait. Waves. 

A great, terrible wave reforming itself into something that could bring down an entire _city—_

Adrenaline flooding him back into full consciousness, Martin tries to get himself from the ground to his feet with no steps in between, and only succeeds in flailing his limbs in a panic. 

Just to add insult to injury while he’s at it, he also nearly knocks out the poor person who was leaning over him trying to help.

“Whoa whoa whoa!”

Whoever it is, they’ve got good reflexes. Martin can make out the blur of them holding their hands up in the universal signal for _trust me, I mean no harm._

“Steady there. Take it easy, we’ve got you.”

Between heaving in gasps of air and trying to force his arms and legs to co-operate with him for long enough to get himself sitting reasonably upright, Martin remembers to set his glasses back where they’re supposed to be. When he thinks he’s got enough of a hold on himself, he looks to his right, trying to get a better look at whoever’s found him.

He’s close to Martin’s age, he would guess, maybe a little older; fair-skinned but clearly used to spending a lot of time outdoors, handsome, with dark hair and a square jawline. He’s also wearing the most outlandish outfit that Martin’s ever seen. Are those bits of _armour_ strapped in strategic places over those clothes?

Eye-searing outfit or not, he takes notice almost as soon as Martin’s regained the use of his senses. He offers him a brief but reassuring smile and then a water bottle in quick succession. Martin takes the water gratefully, only a little embarrassed when he ends up gulping down half the bottle before he can catch himself; he didn’t realise until right now just how thirsty he was.

“Where – where am I?” he asks, now that his mouth can form words again.

“Djose,” his discoverer says, taking back the bottle when Martin holds it out to him. “Near enough, anyway.”

Martin has no idea where that is or what it means. Now he’s got his bearings, he’s beginning to realise that he doesn’t recognise this place at _all._ Not the strange rock formations in the distance, or the dull, grainy sand, or the rocky road following the coastline underneath a large overhanging cliff. None of it.

Just how far did that _thing_ carry him, before it spat him out again at the other end?

It must show on his face, the blankness and the creeping panic, because after a moment the other man takes pity on him and asks, “How much do you remember?”

Isn’t that a question.

“I,” Martin stammers, because the truth is, everything he remembers about what happened is jumbled up in a way that makes it seem like so much. “I, I don’t know, I. There were these _things_ , a-a-and this giant hole in the sky, and some kind of – I think, I remember some kind of giant eye?”

Oh, great, he sounds like he’s completely lost it. He slides both hands under his glasses, pressing his fingertips into his eyes in an attempt to focus. 

“Hey, it’s alright, don’t try to remember too much too fast. Let’s start with something smaller, yeah? What’s your name?”

This all sounds like excellent advice from someone who’s being very, very patient with him when he doesn’t have to be.

“Martin. Um, Martin Blackwood.”

The man gives him an encouraging smile. Martin’s surprised to see that he looks genuinely relieved. 

“There you go, you’ve got your full name, that’s a good start! Alright, Martin Blackwood, I’m Tim. Any idea of where you might be from?”

Another good, simple question that he can actually answer. Martin vaguely recognises that Tim’s probably checking him for signs of a head injury or something, but it helps, having something to focus on.

“Oh, yeah, uh. Zanarkand?”

Whatever reaction Martin was expecting – bewilderment, recognition, maybe even an idea of where Djose is relative to his city if he’s lucky – it’s not the one he gets. Tim does a double take, his eyebrows shooting up towards his hairline.

“ _Zanarkand?_ ” he says incredulously. He shakes his head, frowning. “You must’ve got a really heavy dose of that toxin.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wherever you were before you got washed up here, it got hit by Sin,” Tim says patiently. He’s being gentle about it, but Martin can’t shake the feeling that these are things that Tim considers basic facts of life. Things Martin should have figured out by himself already. 

Then Tim shrugs, and adds, “And since Zanarkand has been a fiend-infested holy ruin for a thousand years…”

Wait, _what?_

“No,” Martin says immediately, because obviously that’s _ridiculous._ Zanarkand, the city he’s spent his entire life in, a ruin? He’d say Tim was having him on, but he seems serious. 

Even so, Martin can’t take _that_ seriously. 

He shakes his head, saying again, “No, that’s not— wait.” Something else Tim said hits him. “H-hang on a sec, Sin! That’s what was— He said that too, the guy with the— uh. Was there anyone else with me? A tall guy with a long coat and a – a bloody _huge_ sword?”

Tim’s eyebrows are going to stay that way if he doesn’t lower them soon.

“Uh, no, just you. Friend of yours?”

“Not hardly,” Martin scoffs. “But he was right there with me when I was grabbed, I swear it.”

He sneaks a look up and down the beach, just in case. But it’s just like Tim said; there’s no sign of that distinctive sword or coat anywhere. Maybe the swordsman got up and walked off already. He seems like that sort of type. The type to take being _transported to who-knows-where by a bloody monster_ in stride, like it’s a regular old Tuesday.

“I’d count your blessings if I was you, Martin. Most people who get as close to Sin as you just did don’t live to tell the tale.” Tim shakes his head, looking grim. Then he blows out a gust of breath, with a lop-sided, faintly impressed smile to go with it. “Zanarkand, though. That’s a good one. Didn’t realise Sin’s toxin could send you _that_ loopy.”

For a second, Martin wants to argue again. But as soon as he opens his mouth, it hits him; Tim really believes what he’s saying. That Zanarkand – _Martin’s_ Zanarkand – is a crumbling ruin that’s been standing lifeless for, what did he say, a thousand years. He says it with the confidence of someone who’s stating a real fact, one they could prove if they had to.

Could that thing – Sin – have carried Martin through _time_ somehow?

It sounds absurd even in the privacy of his own head. But what else does he have to go on right now? Nothing. Nothing except the kindness of someone he’s just met, and the knowledge that whatever attacked his city last night – or a thousand years ago, or whenever it was – the people here in wherever he’s ended up know about it.

Martin closes his mouth, and takes a deep breath. Okay. He’s lied his socks off in pretty much every job interview he’s ever had, he can lie about this too.

“Ha... um, yeah. I, I guess I don’t really know what I was thinking.”

Luckily, Tim takes his hemming and hawing as a sign of whatever aftereffects this toxin is supposed to be having on him.

“S’alright,” he says peaceably. “It’ll pass, sooner or later. Just don’t go saying that around any of the priests at the temples, you’ll give them a heart attack. Either before or after they get you for heresy.”

Tim winks, and his tone is light, but Martin gets the feeling that he’s not actually joking. Not really.

What kind of place has he ended up in?

“Right,” Martin swallows. “Right, yeah. Um. Where, where did you say we were again? Djose…?”

“Yeah, not too far off from the temple,” Tim shrugs. He brightens the next moment, some kind of idea occurring to him. “Oh, we can give you a ride there if you want. It’ll be the safest place to wait it out till your head’s right again.”

“I – yeah, that’d. That’d be really kind of you, thanks. Um. Who’s we?”

“Me and Sasha. Well, and the other Crusaders riding the cart, but mostly just us. Sasha’s good people, you can trust her.”

“My ears are burning,” says a new voice.

Tim and Martin look up at the same time. A tall woman, her long black coils of hair barely kept in check by being pinned out of her face, stands over them on the sand. Her outfit looks just as eclectic as Tim’s, albeit a lot more colour co-ordinated. Martin can’t help but notice that her glasses look _off_ somehow; they seem to have leather frames, of all things. 

She folds her arms and looks at Tim, dimples forming in her deep brown cheeks. “How’s the patient?”

“Speak of the chimera,” Tim says warmly. “Martin, this is Sasha. Sash, you’re gonna love this one. He thought he was from Zanarkand.”

Sasha’s eyebrows go the same way as Tim’s did.

“Wow. Sin’s toxin must have really done a number on you,” she says to Martin. Then she crosses the two steps it takes her to reach Tim and leans down to give him a light smack on the arm. “Be _kind,_ Tim.”

While Martin enjoys the warmth that is the novelty of a total stranger feeling the need to stick up for him, he also really doesn’t want to be the cause of an argument.

“No, yeah, um. You’re right, I’m still not – I’m not all here, really,” he hedges. “I guess, things are so mixed up that I forgot that Zanarkand was… was a ruin?”

Martin wonders if he’ll ever get used to saying that, or even thinking it. He’s still not sure he really believes it.

“More like _the_ ruin,” Sasha replies. “Destroyed in the great Machina War between Zanarkand and Bevelle, remember?”

Martin, of course, does _not_ remember. He couldn’t tell you what Bevelle _is_ , never mind find it on a map. How could Zanarkand ever be at war with a place he’s never even heard of?

He can’t just say that, though. But if he can get away with playing the amnesiac – and for the moment it looks like he can – then he can do that.

“Right! Right, yeah, I… I guess that must have been where my brain pulled _that_ one up from,” he babbles. “Um. Sorry, my head is _killing_ me.”

That at least is not a lie. Martin thinks his brain is fast reaching the limit that any human brain can be expected to deal with.

Sasha’s face softens immediately, full of concern. “Hey, don’t worry. You’ve been through it today. You’re not injured anywhere, are you?”

“Oi! I checked him over already!” Tim says, full of indignation.

Sasha gives him a pointed look. “Yeah, you did, and I know what you’re like, Tim.”

“Oh, no, honestly, I’m fine,” Martin rushes to reassure them. “Just a few bruises, it feels like.”

Actually, it’d be safer to say that his whole body feels like one big bruise at this point. However Sin actually carried him here and wherever it dropped him off before he washed up on this rocky beach, he must have taken a battering. Nothing feels broken, though, and he says as much, even as Sasha crouches down next to him and does a careful, methodical full-body check, pressing lightly as she goes.

Whatever she finds must satisfy her, because she nods and says, “Hmm, alright then. Just as well, I’ve got a couple of potions but I’m no white mage.”

She stands up once more, pulling off the gloves she was wearing and balling them up inside-out before brushing her knees off. Martin takes that as his cue to stand as well. He’s probably more pleased than he should be to find that his legs still work. 

“Get that toxin washed off and we’ll see about getting you a ride to the temple with us,” Sasha tells him now. “Oh – you remember the Prayer, don’t you?”

This is yet another thing that Martin should apparently know but doesn’t, and he says so, trying to sound more like someone who is trying desperately to remember something they _know_ is on the tip of their tongue, and not someone who hasn’t the first clue what Sasha’s talking about. 

Tim and Sasha exchange a look at that. Still, they seem to take it in stride, and promise to jog his memory after he’s toxin-free enough for their liking. Martin’s still not sure what they mean by Sin’s toxin, but he dutifully wades out into the surf far enough to dunk his head under the waves a few times and give everything a rub-down in the salt water. 

He’s surprised when he comes up for air, wiping the stinging ocean water away from his eyes, and finds a light, powdery substance drifting away near the surface of the water where he dunked himself. 

Well. That answers that, then.

The Prayer comes as a surprise too. Tim and Sasha both demonstrate, making him copy their movements until they’re both satisfied. It’s not the gesture itself that surprises him, though it’s rather elaborate for a prayer; both arms sweeping back and out before coming forward to rest in front of the breastbone, head bowed, palms cupped towards each other as though cradling the top and bottom of an invisible sphere.

No, what surprises Martin is that he’s seen it before. Seen it plenty of times, even. Hazy, half-forgotten memories of the athletic kids at school, drunk sports fans stumbling past him in packs late at night, and the one time he ever actually set foot in the stadium to see a game, before it became clear that, ever the disappointment, he didn’t and wouldn’t ever have any interest in blitzball.

See, the thing is, the gesture that Tim and Sasha are calling a prayer – that’s the good luck charm he’s seen people who _do_ care about blitz use for victory.

What has _happened_ to the world in the past thousand years?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter:  
> \- a dream, featuring the associated dream logic and unreality  
> \- blink-and-you-miss-it body horror (eyes where there shouldn't be)  
> \- disorientation  
> \- mentions of: war, injury, amnesia
> 
> (as always, please let me know if you think there should be anything else i warn for in any of my works)
> 
> thanks for reading!


	3. we called it Sin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin hitches a ride, plays at being intoxicated, and tries to learn more about the thing that attacked his home and this strange place he's ended up in.

Martin doesn’t know what he was expecting when Tim and Sasha talked about a cart, but a literal wooden cart pulled by two enormous yellow birds was not it.

“Don’t tell me you can’t remember what a chocobo is,” Tim says when he sees Martin’s face. 

“I – I dunno, I have a feeling that maybe there weren’t many of them where I was from?” Martin deflects. 

At any rate the birds look tame enough, docilely munching on some greens as they wait for the cart to be loaded. Once Martin’s got over the shock of seeing a bird taller than he is, they're actually rather cute.

After a quick word with the woman driving the cart – Crusaders, had Tim called them back on the beach? – the three of them clamber up onto the back, and a few minutes later, the cart rolls off. Martin’s surprised by just how quickly it moves. He wouldn’t call it a smooth ride, not by a long shot, but the chocobos are obviously a lot stronger than they look.

According to Sasha, the cart cuts the time it takes to get to this Djose temple down to about half a day, rather than the two days it would take on foot. That still gives Martin plenty of time to sit and think about the true scale of the absolutely mental situation he’s found himself in, so he pleads a need to rest for the first leg of the journey and tries to do just that.

The first problem, the most immediate one, is that he’s got so many questions, and he doesn’t know which ones are okay for him to ask. How was Zanarkand destroyed? Why are they using carts drawn by chocobos to get around instead of machina? Sasha mentioned some kind of huge machina war, so it stands to reason that the answer to both of those questions lies somewhere with that, but then where does the Sin monster come into it? For that matter, what even _is_ Sin, and why do Tim and Sasha seem to expect Martin to know as much about it as they do?

He’s pretty sure those all come under questions that would _not_ be okay to ask, even for someone who’s supposedly suffering from the after-effects of Sin’s toxin.

The second problem, the one that Martin can’t bring himself to examine too closely yet, is how he’s ever supposed to get back home. Because if Sin was the thing that carried him here, and somehow stranded him a thousand years out of time in the process, it stands to reason that the only hope he has of ever getting back is to deliberately go seeking out the monster that attacked his city. 

Put it bluntly, that just sounds suicidal. Even if his time travel theory is right – and he’s got no real proof yet that it is – there’s no guarantee that deliberately throwing himself into Sin’s path again will make the whole thing happen in reverse. Going off the way Tim and Sasha talked about Sin, not to mention everything else he saw of the thing with his own two eyes, Martin’s far more likely to get himself killed in the attempt.

But if that’s true, that means he’s stuck here. Wherever _here_ is. It’s not like he had all that much going for him back in Zanarkand, but at least it was home. At least he knew was he was doing and where he stood. Here, he’s a stranger in a frightening and unfamiliar land, with no idea of how the rules work or how to survive.

Something nudges his shoulder, jogging him out of his thoughts. Despite the gentleness of the touch, Martin still flinches, his heart skipping a beat.

“Sorry, Martin, didn’t mean to startle you,” Tim says apologetically. “Just wanted to check you were still with us. You were really zoning out there.”

“No, it’s – it’s fine,” Martin sighs. “Just got a lot to think about, you know?”

“Yeah, I bet. And it’s not like the Djose shore offers the most inspiring view either,” Tim says dryly, gesturing at the landscape passing by on either side of the cart. 

He’s not wrong. The shoreline in the Djose area seems to have precious little to offer, apart from rocks, sand, more rocks, and the occasional sullen-looking cluster of rockpools. A geologist might have a field day with it, maybe. Martin thinks he can understand why they haven’t passed a single village, or even a small, lonely house, since their journey began. Who would want to live in a place this bleak?

“The sort of view that really makes you wonder how come more people aren’t just rushing to join up with the Crusaders, doesn’t it?” Sasha says in a tone equally as dry as Tim’s.

“Both of you are Crusaders, then?” Martin asks. That feels like a safe enough question. “Have you been with them for long?”

“A few years now? Long enough to have a few operations under our belts,” Sasha replies. “Before that, we worked at the temple up in Bevelle.”

“Oh, you’re not from round here then?”

“No, we spent most of our lives up north. No one’s _from_ around Djose, not really. Even the priests in the temple were sent here from somewhere else.”

“How come?” Martin thinks he may have some idea, though. “Sin?”

Sasha shrugs. “Probably. Somewhere gets attacked without warning and people never bother to move back in afterwards, you know how it is.”

No, he doesn’t. The way that Sasha does – the way that she’s so _blasé_ about it, and the way Tim is quiet like it’s the sort of story you’re used to hearing every day – it chills Martin’s blood even more than the idea of Zanarkand being a ruin.

“That’s horrible,” he says.

“’Course it is,” Tim says abruptly. “But that’s the whole reason the Crusaders exist, isn’t it? To put an end to it and stop it from ever happening again, no matter what Yevon’s got to say about how we go about doing it.”

“Wait, you lot _fight_ that thing?!” Martin blurts out without thinking. He cringes as soon as the words are out of his mouth. His flimsy cover isn’t even going to last a day at this rate. “Sorry, I – I must sound like a kid with how much the toxin’s scrambled me, it’s just – I don’t, I still don’t remember much about when it attacked my home, but I-I _do_ remember it levelling whole buildings without even batting an eye!”

Martin wonders how much mileage he has left on the excuse of “Sin’s toxin”. Hopefully enough for him to pick up enough about this place to muddle through with the rest. He’s good at that.

“Someone has to, right?” Tim asks him. “What, was I supposed to just cower behind a wall back up in Bevelle for the rest of my life and let some summoner do all the work for me like everyone else? Not likely.”

There’s a stubborn, sharp edge to Tim’s smile that Martin isn’t sure how to read. Whatever Tim’s reasons are for joining the Crusaders’ calling to fight a very literal harbinger of death and destruction, Martin gets the feeling they’re extremely personal.

Sasha must notice the way Martin hesitates in the face of Tim’s sudden intensity. She leans over and nudges Tim’s shoulder gently with a closed fist. 

“Hey, last time I checked we were on our way to sign on as guardians with some summoner,” she says gently. Turning to Martin, she adds, “You might have already guessed that I mostly signed up with the Crusaders to keep an eye on this one. He’s hopeless without me and he knows it.”

Tim looks faintly abashed. Martin watches him very visibly shake himself out of his own dark mood, clutching both hands over his heart in a wounded motion.

“ _Harsh,_ Sasha.”

“ _True,_ Tim.”

“Yeah, I know.” Tim offers her a lop-sided smile. “You just can’t resist reminding me at any chance you get.”

Watching the easy way Tim lets Sasha pull him out of whatever dark place he was teetering towards, Martin tries hard not to feel so wistful about it. Tim and Sasha, he thinks, must have known each other for a long time.

Something else they mentioned is playing on his mind, though.

“So, summoners… they fight Sin too, don’t they?” he says slowly, once again trying to play the amnesiac slowly having bits of his memory nudged back into place. “But in a different way to the Crusaders. Um, a more official one?”

How that could possibly work, or what a summoner could possibly summon that would give them more of a chance against Sin than the Crusaders, Martin has no idea, but he’s hoping Tim and Sasha will enlighten him.

Tim snorts. “More official. Yeah, you could say that. Especially since Yevon excommunicated the lot of us because they didn’t like how cosy we were getting with salvaged machina.”

Another piece of the machina puzzle for Martin to try and slot in somewhere, but he thinks he’s starting to see the shape of it. People – or at least people belonging to whatever this Yevon thing is – must believe machina are bad news for some reason. Probably to do with the Machina War Sasha told him about. It still doesn’t quite add up for Martin, but at least he feels like he’s got a grip on the end of the thread.

“Ah, yes,” Sasha intones in a deep voice. “How dare we use that which is forbidden instead of joining the rest of Spira in hand-wringing over atoning for the wrong-doing of our ancestors.” She sighs. “Classic Yevon,” she adds in her normal voice, clearly going for levity. “Still, you have to admit they’ve got a bit of a point. The summoners still have a higher success rate than we do.”

“I don’t have to admit _anything._ ”

“How many Calms can our motley organisation claim for itself, again?”

Tim grumbles under his breath at that. Martin gets the feeling that he’s missing yet _another_ vital key to understanding this place – Spira – that everyone is going to think he should have.

“And… what’s the Calm?”

Martin knows he’s finally put his foot in it and asked a question a step too far when both Tim and Sasha stare at him.

“I didn’t know Sin’s toxin could make someone forget things like _this,_ ” Tim says after a moment of stunned silence. He turns to Sasha helplessly.

“Me neither,” she says, intently studying Martin’s face. 

Martin wants the ground to swallow him up. But they won’t believe him if he comes clean, either, will they? Who would? 

He has to fight back a sigh of relief a moment later when Sasha says, “But we don’t really know _what_ Sin’s toxin is capable of. I mean, you know as well as I do, the records are totally inconsistent at the best of times. And there’s not many of them.”

“For obvious reasons, yeah,” Tim says, still frowning. He lets out a whoosh of air, looking back at Martin with a face twisted with sympathy. “Sorry, Martin. I can’t wrap my head around how lost you must be feeling right now.”

You have no idea, Martin thinks.

What he says, with a weak smile, is, “Yeah, just a bit. The inside of my head feels like a construction site or something.”

Tim snorts. “Alright, then let’s construct. The Calm is…” 

He looks at Sasha again. “Sasha, how do I even explain the Calm? You’re the nerd, help me out here.”

“You,” Sasha says primly, “Came away from your studies with _distinction,_ Timothy.”

“That doesn’t mean I know how to explain things!”

Sasha rolls her eyes, and with great dignity, turns away from Tim to devote her full attention to Martin.

“The Calm is what happens after a summoner defeats Sin,” she starts. Then she shakes her head, her face twisting as she finds her own explanation wanting. “Hang on, no, that isn’t the best way of explaining it. You’d be more accurate if you said that the Calm is the period of time when Sin doesn’t appear. After a summoner manages to defeat it, and before it eventually rises again with a new shape and starts attacking again.”

Wait.

“So… wait, so. Even if a summoner fights Sin and manages to beat it somehow, it – it still comes back?” Martin can hear his own voice getting more and more high-pitched. “How – _how_ many times has this happened?!”

Tim and Sasha exchange a look.

“Must have been five Calms since Sin first appeared at the end of the Machina War?” Tim says doubtfully. Sasha nods.

“But that was a thousand years ago!”

Five Calms. _Five,_ in a thousand years. Martin dreads asking them how long a Calm lasts. He already knows he won’t like the answer. Already knows he won’t like the answer to the ten other questions that are crowding for space on his tongue. Like, how many people have died in attacks like the one that happened to Zanarkand the night Martin was snatched away. Like, how many Crusaders have died trying to bring the fight to Sin. Like, how many summoners have died while trying to bring the Calm, if only five of them in the thousand years that Sin has been wreaking havoc upon Spira have ever managed it. Like—

“If – if Sin always comes back anyway, then why do summoners keep fighting it the same way? I mean, what’s the—”

“ _Don’t,_ ” Tim says sharply. Martin shuts his mouth right away. Tim's face is thunderous; he looks like he’s barely managing to rein in his temper. 

“If you were about to ask _what’s the point_ , don’t you _dare._ I know I said the Crusaders look for another way, and we’re not wrong to. But don’t you _dare_ say that just because the Calm doesn’t last forever that there’s no point to what the summoners do. You’ve – you’ve _seen_ Sin up close. You know what it does. A few years where nobody has to go through that – it’s worth it.”

Tim clenches his jaw, either stopping himself from saying more or simply unable to go on. Martin feels wretched, and very, very small. What was he thinking? He doesn’t know how these people have lived. How any of the people on Spira live. Not really. 

“Sorry,” he says, barely above a whisper. “I – I wasn’t thinking.”

Sasha shakes her head, throwing a sympathetic, yet pointed look at Tim.

“No, you weren’t really,” she says simply, but not unkindly. “But I also think anyone would be shocked if they heard what we just told you in your shoes. Maybe we’d all react that way if we woke up with all our memories of how the world works scrambled up like yours.”

It’s a little condescending, but Martin can tell Sasha’s at least trying to make him feel better about saying something so unbelievably insensitive. He’s starting to realise just how lucky he is that it was Tim and Sasha who stumbled across him on the beach. He has the horrible feeling that not many other people in Spira would be this understanding.

Still, he can’t help thinking to himself, as the three of them lapse into an uncomfortable silence, about how a thousand years and five Calms could have passed with nobody finding a more permanent way to put Sin down.

Because everyone’s too focused on surviving, he realises straight away. Or something like that, anyway. Martin thinks so. That has to be it. There’s no other reason anyone would let a situation like this go on for so long otherwise.

After a few minutes, Sasha speaks up again.

“It’s probably a good thing we’re getting all of this out of the way before we hit the temple, actually. Save giving the priests—”

“A heart attack?” Martin guesses wryly.

Tim snorts. “Beat you to using that one already, Sasha,” he says, recovering some of his humour. “Never mind the priests, can you imagine _Jon’s_ face if he’d heard some of that?”

“You know I can,” Sasha says with a small smile. “Jon’s a friend of ours from back up in Bevelle,” she adds, at Martin’s mystified expression. “He’s a summoner who’s just started out on his pilgrimage, and he also just happens to have the biggest stick up his arse of anyone we know when you catch him on a bad day, so… you can imagine his reaction.”

Martin can, and once again feels very, very lucky to have been found by these two Crusaders.

“And he’s going on pilgrimage… to beat Sin?”

“Yep,” Tim nods. “Visiting every temple, praying to the fayth, hopefully managing to not piss them all off for long enough to bag an aeon at each one… it’s a long journey, so Sasha and I are going to go offer our services as his guardians to make sure he doesn’t get lost on the way.”

Martin understood about half of those words. The half he did understand, though, makes him realise that he won’t be able to rely on Tim and Sasha for much longer. It’s a sadder and more frightening thought than it should be, considering he’s barely known them for longer than a few hours. He’s not sure he’ll find the priests at the temple even half as likeable. Or as safe. 

He’s beginning to understand - really understand - just how much trouble he’d be in, if he slips up in his lie and people find out that he’s not just from Zanarkand, but a Zanarkand that uses machina as naturally as breathing. But what else is he supposed to do? Ask to come along on this summoner’s pilgrimage just to avoid being left behind at a temple? He’d slow them down at best. Get himself or the rest of them killed at worst.

That’s it, then. Martin quietly resigns himself to being left behind, and asks, “And… whereabouts are you lot headed on this pilgrimage? At, at the end of it, I mean.”

Sasha gives him another strange look. So does Tim – but then he laughs suddenly, rubbing the back of his head.

“Funny thing, actually, given what you said when you were still high on toxin,” he admits. “We’re heading to Zanarkand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter:  
> \- discussions skirting around the topics of: death, Sin-typical violence and destruction, futility, religious fundamentalism (all touched on very mildly)
> 
> (as always, let me know if there's anything i should warn for but haven't)
> 
> thanks for reading, everyone!


	4. djose temple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Martin gets a shock to discover that he has closer ties to Spira than he thought. Tim's big brother instincts are activated. Sasha and Tim reunite with a long-lost friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of a longer chapter than usual this time, folks! hope you enjoy it. content warnings in the end notes as per usual for this fic.

Even if Martin wasn’t still trying to wrap his head around everything he’s finding out about Spira – not least the coincidence of being washed up right into the path of people whose final destination is _Zanarkand_ of all places – even without all that, he doesn’t think he would have been any better prepared for his first sight of Djose temple.

It’s a tall, imposing building, more of a tower than anything. Set against the dark rock of the cliff face at the very end of a deep ravine tucked away on the shoreline, everything about it looks built to last; a lone, steadfast bulwark looming over any who approach.

That’s not its most striking feature, though.

No, that honour definitely goes to the giant chunks of rock that are suspended in orbit around the temple by flickering arcs of _lightning_.

“Oh, the lightning mushroom rock’s open,” Sasha says as they draw closer, with all the air of someone commenting on the weather. “Jon must be through the cloister and speaking with the fayth already.”

“Sasha,” Tim says with a great effort, trying to hold back laughter. “Maybe give Martin a minute, he looks like he’s about to keel over.”

“Are – are _all_ the temples like this one?” Martin asks, still staring wide-eyed at the lightning darting between the floating boulders. He can’t believe that this kind of sight is _that_ normal.

“Oh, no way,” Tim assures him. “The fayth here is just really tuned in to the thunder element, so it influences the area around the temple. The others have their own brand of weirdness going on.”

“ _Tim._ ”

“I mean, their own brand of awe-inspiring power, praise be to Yevon.” Tim rolls his eyes in Sasha’s direction. “It’s _weird,_ Sasha, give Martin a break. Not everyone’s as comfortable with magic as you.”

“You’re a mage?” Martin asks, surprised. Sasha nods, but not until after she’s rolled her eyes right back at Tim first.

“Yeah, I mostly deal in elemental spells. You know, black magic. I tried branching out into white magic once, but I could never really get the knack of it.” She sounds a little put out by that. “What, you didn’t think I walked around with all these books strapped to me for fun, did you?”

She indicates the series of tiny, leather-bound books strapped to the belt around her waist. 

“Don’t be fooled,” Tim says to Martin in a stage whisper. “Some of those aren’t for magic, they’re her nerd journals. So _definitely_ for fun.”

“Brave man, antagonising the woman who could throw lightning at you whenever she wanted,” Sasha says serenely, but there’s no bite to it.

“That’s pretty amazing, though,” Martin offers. “I – I can’t be sure, but I don’t think we had anyone who could do things like that where I’m from.”

People who could pull tiny bits of magic to them to give them a bit of an edge when they needed it, sure. But no one who could do anything on the scale Sasha’s suggesting she can. Maybe once upon a time, but – no one in Zanarkand _needs_ magic like that. If anyone ever did know it, it’s long become a lost art – something from kids’ stories.

“Well, you have to work at it,” Sasha demurs, but she looks pleased at the compliment. “Anyway, shall we go inside?”

The inside of the temple is just as dark and imposing as its outer face. There’s lightning flickering away in here as well, bright orbs of electricity glowing brightly at the tips of pillars that are set at strategic points around the hall, or so Martin assumes. They send the occasional tendril of light sparking lazily outwards every so often, and Martin decides that, even if it’s probably perfectly safe, he’s going to keep a wide berth from them all the same.

The rest of the hall looks like what he would probably expect a temple to look like on the inside. Tiled mosaic floor, walls lined with intricately carved, imposing statues. A couple of shadowed doors branch off on either side to smaller chambers further into the temple, while a great, wide staircase leads up towards an elaborate archway at the very back of the hall. 

Above the archway hangs a heavy embroidered banner bearing a sigil in black. A giant, lidless eye, or at least something that looks a lot like an eye, set above two wing-like shapes that flank something that looks vaguely like a person. 

Martin feels an irrational urge to cover the banner up. It’s silly, but having that big eye staring down at him makes him feel uncomfortably like he’s being watched.

They’re not long through the door before Sasha pulls away to go and find a priest she can ask about their summoner friend. That leaves Martin and Tim to mill about the entrance hall, kicking their heels and – in Martin’s case, anyway – trying not to get in anyone’s way. 

At least that’s easy enough to do; the priests must all be elsewhere in the temple, doing whatever it is that priests of Yevon do. Once Sasha leaves, the hall is quiet but for the two of them and the constant hum of the lightning pillars.

And the singing.

Martin was too distracted by the lightning on his way in to properly register it, but it draws his attention now: a constant tenor voice echoing throughout the temple, bright and melodic, light like air but faintly melancholy all the same. It makes Martin think of open skies and summer rainstorms.

Now that he’s paying attention to it, as the song draws on Martin realises that he _knows_ this tune. The words are strange, but there’s no mistaking it – it’s a folk tune, from back home. The sort of tune mothers use to get their kids to sleep, before those kids get a bit bigger and start setting their own words to it like they’re the first generation to ever have that idea. 

Strange to hear it in a holy place in this hostile world.

“Who’s that singing?” he asks.

“What? Oh, you mean the Hymn,” Tim says absently; he's obviously not as struck by it as Martin is. “The fayth are always singing it. I mean, constantly, they never stop. Or at least that’s always been the case for every temple I’ve been in.” He glances towards the archway at the top of the stairs. “Guess they don’t have much else to do, aside from waiting for the next summoner to come along and beg their power off of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, they’re spirits, aren’t they?” Tim looks a bit uncomfortable. “Of people who gave themselves to Yevon while they were still alive so that summoners could draw on them to call down aeons to fight Sin. It’s not like they can go anywhere outside of the temple they’re in.”

Martin finds himself filled with a dull, leaden sort of horror. He’s already heard so many horrifying things today that it’s a wonder he still has room for any more, and he wonders if there’ll come a point at which he just stops feeling it. When hearing about these things just becomes a fact of life for him like it seems to be for everyone else in Spira. Just something to accept and move on from.

If that point does exist, he hasn’t reached it yet. He thinks about it – the idea of _giving yourself to Yevon_ , whatever that means – and he feels nauseous. It can’t be anything pleasant. Just another thing people do when they’re desperate for any chance to actually push back against Sin.

It must show on his face. Tim sighs, and adds, “Yeah, I don’t like thinking about it for too long either. Kind of gives me the creeps if I’m honest. You have a look at the statues of the high summoners yet? Who knows, might help jog your memory.”

Martin hasn’t, and he gladly follows Tim’s lead in changing the subject, allowing Tim to take him around the four larger-than-life statues flanking the staircase, two on either side. Martin doesn’t recognise any of them, obviously, and there’s no memories missing for them to jog, but he lets Tim play the tour guide and tell him their names and when they defeated Sin and odd, random bits of trivia about their lives.

They get to the statue furthest on the right, the newest one, and Tim pauses for a moment with a slight grin on his face. 

“Ah, here she is. High Summoner Gertrude Robinson. Brought the Calm, what, fifteen years ago now?” Tim shakes his head. “I was still a teenager back then. Sasha met her once, says she was a right battleaxe.”

Even cast into stone, High Summoner Gertrude _looks_ like a right battleaxe. An elderly lady, stern and formidable, with a sharp jaw and even sharper eyes. Definitely the sort of person Martin can imagine taking on Sin and winning. Even the fact that she survived in Spira long enough to be immortalised with wrinkles is enough to tell him that she must have been tough.

“Gertrude’s an interesting one, actually,” Tim’s saying. He glances about furtively, checking that it’s still just the two of them, and then drops his voice low. “Don’t mention this within earshot of anybody from Yevon, but she was a raging heretic for most of her life. They’ve been trying their damnedest to paper over it ever since, but nobody’s ever searched harder for an unconventional way of beating Sin than she did. I’m still convinced she only went on pilgrimage in the end because she knew she was getting old and wanted to stick her fingers up at Yevon one last time before she kicked it.”

Martin looks back up at the statue of Gertrude. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I can see how her managing to beat Sin could have caused some real headaches for them.” If what Tim’s saying is true, anyway – and there’s far too much genuine admiration in Tim’s voice for Martin to think it’s not. “I know you said all summoners have them, but it’s weird to think of someone like _her_ needing guardians. Like you and Sasha are doing for your friend.”

“Yeah,” Tim starts, but Sasha’s voice from behind them cuts him short.

“Hope you two didn’t get into too much trouble while I was gone.”

Sasha’s returned to them with a robed priest in tow, and Martin tries as hard as he can not to let any hint of what he and Tim have just been talking about show on his face.

“We’ve been good as gold,” Tim tells her, before turning to the priest and performing a quick version of the Prayer. Martin hastily follows suit. “Any word on Jon?”

Sasha glances at the priest with a carefully composed expression. “Father Edwin says it’s been over a day since he went into the cloister.”

“That long?” Tim asks sharply, the smile on his face plummeting. “Is he alright in there?”

“Sasha tells me that this is his first temple?” Father Edwin says with gentle patience in his words. “The first fayth is often the hardest, or so the records show. The first real test of a summoner’s mettle – and that of their guardians.”

Martin gets the feeling that that last comment is aimed specifically at Tim. He doesn’t think Tim’s _wrong_ to be worried, though. How long is a summoner expected to ask a fayth to lend them their power? Are they allowed to take a break to sleep? To _eat?_ Or is that considered a failure to pass the test?

“But what if something happens to the summoner while he’s in there?” Martin blurts out.

The priest startles, seeming to actually notice him for the first time. His eyes land on Martin, and he does a double take, before dropping into the most deep and elaborate version of the Prayer that Martin has seen yet.

“Praise be to Yevon!” Father Edwin exclaims. “Sir Blackwood?”

Maybe Tim was right to check him for a head injury on the beach. Martin thinks he might need to check again to be safe.

“Um,” Martin stammers. “I’m, I’m sorry, what? I think you’ve got me mixed up with somebody else.”

Tim and Sasha are both staring. Martin hears Tim mutter, “But that _is_ his name,” while Father Edwin looks puzzled now, though a deep awe still lies across his face in a way that makes Martin deeply self-conscious.

“You’re sure? The resemblance is uncanny. Though,” and he scrutinises Martin’s face now, looking thoughtful, “Now that the shock has passed and I think on it, you are a little on the youthful side.”

The youthful side for _what?_ Martin throws a helpless look at Tim and Sasha, silently pleading for them to help him out of whatever he didn’t know he just walked into.

Sasha coughs. “I think there must be some kind of mistake, Father,” she tries, though she keeps throwing curious looks Martin’s way. “Martin washed up on the shoreline earlier today. He was recently attacked by Sin, and came under the influence of the toxin.”

Once again, Martin finds himself the object of another of Father Edwin’s looks of amazement. The priest moves into the Prayer again, seemingly unaware that he’s doing so.

“It seems we must give thanks to Yevon indeed,” he says gravely. “I will pray that whatever effects the toxin has had pass swiftly for you. Still – I find it astonishing that you have not yet noticed.” 

Father Edwin lapses into a brief silence, thinking. “I think it’s best if I show you now,” he says decidedly. “I may have been the first to notice, but I certainly won’t be the last. Follow me.”

Father Edwin turns on his heel and walks swiftly over to the far right hand side of the entrance hall. Martin, Tim, and Sasha all look uncertainly at one another, but it seems like they don’t really have any choice except to follow him. At any rate, not doing it would be rude, seeing as how they’re in Father Edwin’s temple.

There’s less light at the left and right sides of the hall; the flickering light from the lightning pillars doesn’t fall as consistently here. The statues lining the slightly raised platform against the walls here are smaller in stature than the colossi the four High Summoners have been blessed with, slightly smaller than life-sized rather than larger-than-life. Father Edwin takes them down the row almost to the door, and then stops.

“The guardians to the High Summoners may receive less attention than those whom they served, but they are no less deserving of honour and remembrance,” the priest explains. “Each temple of Yevon contains the lesser statues such as these, made in the image of those who were willing to lay down their lives to protect their summoners should the need ever arise on the long journey to Zanarkand.”

He gestures to one of the statues now, leading their eyes. “You see? Like I said, the resemblance is _uncanny._ ”

Martin follows Father Edwin’s hand to where he’s pointing and feels like he’s been punched in the gut.

It isn’t like looking in a mirror, not exactly. At least, not for longer than a second. But in many ways that’s almost worse, because for every difference he can find, it just makes the things that are the same jump out at him even more. That’s his chin. His nose. The same shape of his eyes. _Older,_ yeah, but the same enough to notice.

There is a sound like rushing water in Martin’s ears.

“Wow, he wasn’t wrong,” Sasha says, the first to recover her voice.

“Yeah,” Tim agrees, sounding a little awed and shaken himself. “You sure there’s not something you want to tell us, Martin?”

“I think,” Martin croaks. The ground feels very far away. “I think – that’s my _dad?_ ”

“Oh, holy shit,” Tim says softly.

At the same time, Father Edwin nods and says, “Sir Emil Blackwood, guardian to High Summoner Gertrude.” His voice softens as he says gently, “You said he was your father? This could be an auspicious sign, for you to have found yourself in this temple on the same day it may see a new summoner take the first step on his own path to defeating Sin.”

“Yeah, you know what?” Tim says abruptly. “Martin, we’re taking a moment outside for a bit. Come on.”

Tim nudges his elbow gently, and Martin allows himself to be steered away in the direction of the door, though he barely remembers moving his feet afterwards. The next thing he remembers is sitting on the ground outside the temple, the lightning still arcing far above his head, with Tim next to him.

“Right, come on you,” Tim says briskly. “Knees up, head between your legs, and just breathe for a bit. You looked like you were about to pass out in there.”

Martin follows those instructions, and tries to focus on just breathing for a bit. If it’s possible for a mind to feel full to bursting and completely empty all at the same time, that might be where Martin’s at right now.

“Never a dull moment with you today, is there?” Tim says after a while. “I mean – good that we found _something_ in there to jog your memory, but what a way to get reminded about your dad.”

“Can we not talk about it?” Martin says bluntly, still staring at the ground.

To his credit, Tim takes that in stride. “That’s fair,” he says. “But if you want to, I’ll listen.”

Martin doesn’t want to. Martin doesn’t think he’ll ever want to. And even if he did, it’s not like Tim will be around to listen in a couple of days anyway.

He still remembers when his dad disappeared. Long since moved past it, obviously, because there were other things to worry about, but now Martin looks back on it with new eyes. 

He thought for years that his dad had just… up and left. Gone without saying a word. Dads do that, sometimes. And it wouldn’t have been out of nowhere, really; Martin was old enough when it happened to notice that things were getting… _strained._ Had been for a while, since Mum started getting sick. They had a fight, Dad walked out to clear his head, and never walked back in, and Zanarkand is big enough to disappear in and never cross paths with someone again if that’s what you want. So Martin quietly put the pieces together in his own head after it happened, grappled to come to terms with it, and then quietly put it all away in a box when he was done.

Other things to worry about.

But now he’s seen that statue, and he’s remembering things like: there was a really bad storm the last night he saw his dad. _Really_ bad, the sort of once-in-a-lifetime, thing-you-tell-your-grandchildren-about-when-you’re-eighty bad. It actually flattened all the boats down the dockside area and tore up some of the buildings where it hit hardest. Now he’s thinking things like: _was_ that a storm? Or was it actually Sin, passing close by? Close by enough to damage things, and maybe snatch up a man who really was just taking a walk to clear his head?

Martin doesn’t know _what_ to think. But one thing’s for sure: somehow or other, his dad got dragged away to Spira just the same way Martin has been. Just in time to land in the path of Gertrude Robinson, High fucking Summoner, and – what, pledge himself as her _guardian?_ How did _that_ happen?

Maybe he discovered he couldn’t get back, says a voice in Martin’s head.

Maybe you’re just wishful thinking, he thinks back at it irritably. It really isn’t fair, to have old wounds ripped open like this on top of everything else.

“Thanks for the offer,” he says to Tim at last. “But I think what I really need is just to pass out until the world makes sense again.”

Tim hums, considering this.

“Not a bad shout. But I’ve got something else in mind if you’re willing to hear me out?”

~ ⛼ ~

It turns out that what Tim has in mind is teaching Martin to fight.

“It hit me that maybe the toxin stole that from you too, if you ever had it,” he explains. “And you know, hitting things is therapeutic. If nothing else, you’ll sleep better tonight.”

Martin is not a small guy. But he’s also never fought anything a day in his life. Actually, he tries to go out of his way to _avoid_ fights, if he can.

“What, now?” Martin protests. He appreciates Tim trying to look out for him, a total stranger, like this, he really does, but - something in him recoils at the idea all the same. And besides which - “Come on, I mean - is this really the time? After what that priest said, shouldn't you go and help your friend?”

“Wish I could,” Tim says with a tight edge to his smile. “But Sasha and me technically aren't Jon's guardians yet, so we can't go in the cloister unless we want to put the whole pilgrimage at risk, and Jon might just kill me himself if I do that. Trust me,” he adds when Martin opens his mouth, “I'm not a fan either.”

Martin presses his lips together in an effort not to say any of the things running through his head right now. He's not sure he likes what it says about Yevon, that their rules are so stringent they'd rather leave a summoner in their temple to the very real danger of starving or exhausting themselves to what could be the point of death rather than let anyone go in to help.

“There'll be guardians in there with him already, anyway,” Tim sighs. “So, you know, I've just got to suck it up and twiddle my thumbs out here.” He flashes Martin a crooked smile. “So you see, if you give in and let me put you through your paces you'd actually be doing _me_ a bit of a favour.”

Martin's not sure if Tim knows what he's doing, but unknowingly or not, he's found Martin's weak spot, framing it like that. Relenting a little, Martin asks, “Do I _need_ to know how to fight?”

“If you ever wanna travel anywhere else in Spira, you’ll at least need to know how to hit a fiend hard enough, fast enough, or smart enough to give you enough time to run away from it,” Tim tells him. “The Crusaders protect the main roads as best we can, but we can’t be everywhere at once.”

“There’s a lot of fiends about, then?” Martin frowns. He’s not even surprised to hear that regular monster encounters are a part of daily life at this point, after everything else he’s already heard about Spira. But even so…

“Another one of the many things we have to thank Sin for,” Tim says grimly. “You’re not seriously saying you forgot that as well?”

“I don’t think we saw many of them back home,” Martin says truthfully. “I think… I remember it was always a really big deal whenever one showed up.”

“Even more reason to teach you one or two tricks now, then,” Tim shoots back with a nod. “Come on, the temples always have a few old relics lying around. Let’s see if there’s something that’ll suit you.”

Tim has a job of it; even after they’re shown to a small storeroom that appears to be a veritable treasure trove of things that people have either donated to the temple or left behind over the years, Martin can’t find it in himself to feel comfortable with _any_ of the weapons Tim finds for him.

He flat-out rejects the sword as soon as he sees it. They consider the bow for a while, debating Martin’s upper body strength and the advantage of being able to take down fiends at a distance, but eventually dismiss it when Tim admits that he has no idea how to teach anyone how to shoot and that if anything got the drop on Martin at close quarters, he’d soon be in hot water. Tim extols the virtues of the partly rusted halberd leaning against the wall for its ability to keep things at arms’ length, but Martin can’t help eyeing the length of it with deep suspicion. Martin is _not_ a graceful person. He’d be more likely to stab his own eye out with that thing, or trip over it when he tried to attack, and he tells Tim so as well. Tim even pulls out his own pair of handaxes at one point, showing how their relatively light weight and particular balance can be played to his advantage, and pointing out how they can be thrown if it ever really comes down to it. Martin can see his point, but the idea of swinging a couple of axes around just sounds utterly ludicrous to him.

Eventually, Tim suggests, “What about a couple of daggers? They’re pretty light, you can hide them and wear them around easy enough, and anyone can give things a good stab if it comes down to it. Stab something enough times, you’ll eventually hit _something_ vital.”

“That’s… a really, really disturbing thing to say, Tim.”

“It’s true, though. Or, look at it this way: if something ever does get too close to you, you can pull a dagger out and surprise it quicker and stealthier than anything else. Might surprise them long enough for you to run.”

That’s more or less how Martin finds himself the extremely uncertain owner of a pair of small, lethal-looking daggers. Tim spends the rest of the time they have until the light starts fading outside following through with his promise to put Martin through his paces, showing him the most effective ways to stab and even block with them.

Sasha joins them midway, offering pointers of her own and creating targets of magical ice and water for Martin to practice on.

“You’re holding back against Tim,” she tells him. “You won’t be able to hold back if something out there comes at you for real. It’s better for you to figure out where your real limits are now while you’re still just practicing.”

Whatever the reason, Martin’s grateful to be facing off against Sasha’s moving yet decidedly non-living elemental targets. She was right; he was way too afraid of hurting Tim to actually focus on his technique. This helps, even if there’s a little voice in the back of Martin’s mind telling him that there is no _way_ he will ever use what they’re teaching him.

By the time they call it a day, Martin is tired, sore, desperately in need of a shower, and ready to collapse on the nearest flat surface, soft or not. He also feels so much better than he did a few hours ago. Apparently there really was method in Tim’s madness.

“Nice work,” Tim tells him with a tired, satisfied grin. He holds a fist out to Martin expectantly; Martin blinks at it for a moment, before gently tapping his own against it with a worn-out smile on his own face.

“I can’t promise I’ll ever actually use any of this,” he warns Tim, hoping he doesn’t sound ungrateful.

“Eh,” Tim shrugs easily. “Like I said, it’s hard to go wrong with a dagger. Just make sure the pointy end’s pointing the right way.”

“I think Martin could have figured that one out on his own,” Sasha begins to say, but half of her words are drowned out by the sudden, overwhelmingly loud noise of grinding rock.

All three of them jump. Above them, the giant boulders around the temple have stopped their lazy, lightning-clad orbit and are being drawn back towards the walls of the building, wrapping around it like a cloak. The sound it makes is terrific. Martin’s ears are still ringing even after it’s over and everything above the main door of the temple is completely clad in what now looks to be solid stone.

When the noise and the movement cease, everything seems almost too still in comparison. Tim and Sasha look just as dazed as Martin for a moment before Sasha’s eyes widen in realisation.

“Tim! The lightning mushroom rock closed!”

For a second longer, Tim stares at her like she’s suddenly started speaking some incomprehensible language.

“Oh!” he exclaims a moment later, clapping a hand to his forehead. Martin tries to follow the thread, and recalls what Sasha said about the weird lightning rock when the three of them were heading in.

“Your friend?” he guesses, second-hand relief rising within him. “Does this mean he’s done?”

“Done, and hopefully with an aeon to show for it,” says Sasha, who looks like she’s having a hard time keeping a lid on whatever she must be feeling. “Come _on,_ Tim, let’s _go._ ”

She tugs on Tim’s arm a couple of times, before remembering herself and throwing an apologetic look at Martin. He shakes his head, smiling in spite of himself, and waves a hand towards the door.

“Go on,” he says. He might not have a handle on the situation, not even a little, but he can tell how much this means to them both all the same. “I’ll catch you guys up.”

Sasha needs no further encouragement, walking briskly towards the door of the temple and pulling Tim along until he matches her pace. 

Martin watches the door close behind them. Then he stretches, because he vaguely remembers reading somewhere once that you’re supposed to do that after a work-out unless you want to wake up the next morning with every muscle in your body seizing up. Then he counts out a minute in his head, looking up at the twilight sky and trying to see if he can spot any stars coming out. Then he sighs, and turns back towards the temple, opening the heavy door as unobtrusively as possible so he can slip inside.

The entrance hall is one of those timeless rooms that looks the same no matter what time of day it is outside. The crackling balls of electricity still hum atop their pillars, casting the dark room in strange shadows, and the fayth’s singing still echoes around the room. 

Tim and Sasha hover impatiently near the foot of the stairs, and to Martin’s surprise they’re still alone. He would’ve thought they’d be at least talking to their friend by now. Maybe he should have given them more time. Maybe the cloister behind that door under the archway at the back is a lot larger than he thought, or their friend passed out, or—

The door at the back of the room opens up with a grating clang.

Three people emerge at the top of the stairs. Two women dressed in full armour, and a man, shorter than either of them and wearing a long, elaborate robe that swamps his slim frame. He leans heavily on the armour-clad warrior to his right, who is much paler than either of her two companions, with a pointed chin and a shock of red hair visible under her helmet. Her gaze sweeps over the room; although her stoic expression doesn’t flicker even once, it’s clear she’s sizing each of them up as her eyes land on them. The other warrior looks equally as stoic as the first; she's the same height as her comrade, give or take an inch or so, but sturdy and compact instead of lean and wiry, with high cheekbones and a square jaw. A headscarf keeps her hair bound neatly away under her helmet.

That leaves the man between them, who must be Jon – the summoner Tim and Sasha are here to meet. He looks about as awful as Martin feels after the day he’s had; utterly exhausted, drawn and haggard, with an obvious pallor to his brown skin even in the dim, flickering light of the entrance hall. Martin isn’t sure if the bags under his eyes are from the ordeal of staying awake to treat with the fayth, or if they’re a more permanent part of his face, but the eyes above them are very striking: large and very, very dark, set deep on either side of an aquiline nose. His wavy black hair, shot through with grey, is flyaway and sticking up every which way, even pointing directly up on end in some places.

The two women with him must be the other guardians Tim mentioned earlier, Martin realises. Really, it makes sense. Tim and Sasha said their hometown of Bevelle was some ways to the north; Jon couldn’t have been expected to journey down here with no guardians. 

Martin watches as Tim and Sasha turn to one another with twin looks full of emotion, relief and joy and worry and other things he can’t read, before they turn back to the stairs and Tim calls up.

“Should we have brought a bottle of something to mark the occasion?” He sounds jovial, his voice echoing even above the singing of the fayth.

Jon’s exhausted face twists into the side of the warrior’s arm, obviously grumbling even at this distance. 

“When did you get here, Tim?” he grouses, in a rich voice made raspy by fatigue.

“Earlier today,” Sasha pipes up. “I see you’ve stayed true to form and started without us.”

“That’s the Jon we know,” Tim adds sagely. “Ever the workaholic.”

Jon stares down at them both with one of the flattest looks Martin’s ever seen. With the height he has standing at the top of that staircase, it’s pretty effective. “Are the two of you done?” 

“Us? Never.”

“It’s like he doesn’t know us at all,” Sasha adds with a nod, deep fondness amid the teasing all the same.

“Friends of yours, I’m guessing?” interrupts the warrior with the headscarf. She’s too far away for Martin to see if she has an eyebrow raised or not, but the tone of her voice certainly does.

“For my misdeeds,” Jon says dryly. Martin thinks he sees the warrior smirk at that, and then Jon says something else to her that Martin can’t quite catch that makes her look sharply towards Tim and Sasha.

“Oh,” she says, loud enough for Martin to hear. She doesn’t sound especially impressed. “The Crusaders.”

“Who haven’t seen him in _years!_ ” Tim stresses. “Get down here already and let us have a proper reunion!”

It’s slow progress, the guardian on Jon’s right maintaining an obvious vigilance to make sure he doesn’t trip on the stairs, but Jon manages to make it down to the bottom more or less under his own power. He’s barely stepped down onto the tiled floor of the chamber before Tim’s on him, pulling him and Sasha both into a hug before either of them can say anything about it.

“You look absolutely terrible,” Tim says. He doesn’t have much of an indoor voice, so the sound carries back to Martin even with how much he’s trying not to intrude too much on this moment. 

Jon, neatly squashed between the two Crusaders, says something acidly; Martin misses some of the words, but it sounds like he’s asking Tim if he’d look any better after hours of trying to talk with a fayth. Sasha says something then, and Martin hears Jon respond, crisp and acerbic, “An absolute nightmare, thanks for asking,” before his voice drops into something quieter and surprisingly warm, the words themselves lost beneath the Hymn. 

Tim and Sasha finally let their friend have a bit of space to breathe, though Martin notes Sasha’s hand remaining steady on his elbow.

“What,” Sasha’s voice carries over, clear and warm, “You didn’t think we’d sit this one out, did you? Who else is going to be brave enough to tell the great summoner when he needs to fix his bad hair day?”

“Certainly not those two up there,” says Tim, who still has no indoor voice.

Jon rolls his eyes, making a point of it enough that even Martin can see him doing it. He glances towards the guardians in question; their faces are still more or less impassive, though the one with the sharp cheekbones is looking at Tim with raised eyebrows.

Sasha, ignoring Tim, prompts Jon with another question that Martin doesn’t quite get all the words for, though he hears the word “aeon” mentioned. Jon nods, his face resolute; Tim and Sasha look at each other once again, and Martin sees Tim heave out a sigh.

“That’s it then,” he says, quietly for him. He seems to rally himself the next moment, an audible grin in his voice. “Well, look at you. A proper summoner, then.”

“Shut _up_ , Tim,” Jon says sharply, though with no real venom that Martin can hear. His eyes pass behind Tim and Sasha and through the space that’s left between them now that they’re no longer hugging him, and land on Martin, who is still hovering close to the door.

“Who are you?” he asks.

Thrown off by being noticed – and by having everyone else’s attention drawn back to him so bluntly – Martin freezes up. 

“Um—”

“That’s Martin!” Tim cuts in. He nods his head toward Jon, and to Martin’s growing horror, starts to none-too-subtly guide his friend closer to the entrance, where Martin’s standing. “Martin, Jon.”

Jon turns deeply suspicious eyes onto Tim, exhaustion briefly taking a back seat to a laser focus. 

“And why is he here?”

“He washed up on the beach this morning,” says Sasha, who Martin is grateful to see is following Tim closely. “After facing Sin.”

Jon blinks, starting. “Oh,” he says awkwardly, wrong-footed by this. “I’m – glad to see you escaped unharmed.”

“Yeah, about that.” Tim sounds casual. Tim sounds way, way too casual. “You don’t mind if he comes with us, do you?”

“What,” Martin says, sure that he just heard that wrong.

“ _What?_ ” Jon snaps, almost stumbling over with how sharply he tries to look back at Tim. 

“What?” Sasha echoes, looking over at Tim with a pointed, raised eyebrow.

“‘Course you don’t,” Tim says breezily, ignoring the three of them, and also ignoring the steady way that Jon’s other two guardians are boring holes into the back of his skull with their eyes. “Why would you—”

“Tim?” Jon interrupts him. There’s a wild undertone to his voice, and he looks as though he is trying valiantly to restrain himself. “A word?”

Jon drags a grinning Tim off into a corner of the temple antechamber away from the others, a move that would be far more effective if he didn’t have to lean on Tim for support half the time that he’s pulling him across the room. Tim looks back at Martin and Sasha with that same grin, mouthing _trust me!_ before blithely allowing Jon to steer him where he will.

Martin watches them go. He’s vaguely aware of the two warrior guardians beginning a low conference of their own, as Jon begins a series of unsteady, agitated gesturing at Tim on the other side of the room, but Martin barely has the thought to spare for any of them as a low, rising panic starts churning at the pit of his stomach.

“What is Tim _doing?!_ ” he asks Sasha, low, urgent, and maybe verging slightly on the edge of hysteria.

“Tim is…” Sasha says slowly, as she sidles up next to Martin. She sighs. “Tim is doing what Tim sometimes does, which is make wild choices with the best of intentions without thinking them through or consulting other people about it first.” She throws a long-suffering look Martin’s way. “You’d think I’d have reached my quota with _one_ friend who was prone to that.”

“I can’t – I can’t come with you!” Martin hisses, trying to keep his voice down, and also trying not to think about what is going on in the other two conversations happening right now. “I don’t know how to fight, I don’t know – I-I can’t remember the first thing about what a summoner does, or what happens on a pilgrimage, or— what’s he thinking?”

Sasha is almost infuriatingly calm. “At a guess…”

She glances over to where Jon and Tim are, her eyes narrowing in thought. “I think he’s thinking that you’ll be better off with us than stuck here in this temple.” 

She pauses, then adds, “I agree with him.”

Martin stares at her.

“You – you what?”

Sasha, of all things, smiles.

“Don’t let Tim run all over you with his enthusiasm about it, even if he does convince Jon you’re still free to say no if you don’t want to come with. I mean, it’s not going to be an _easy_ journey,” she says, pragmatic as anything. “But we can at least take you to somewhere with more people. You know, somewhere a bit safer. And you might be more likely to find someone you know.”

That is not going to happen. But Sasha doesn’t know that, and it’s Martin’s fault that she doesn’t know that because he’s the one who decided to lie about it, and so it makes sense that she’s saying it.

As an afterthought, Sasha adds, “And you won’t be cooped up in this temple with priests who think you’re some kind of second coming.”

Martin grimaces. Tim’s distraction with the impromptu combat training was effective, but even just the mention of that encounter – and the realisations that came with it, the ones that Martin is still not ready to properly examine yet – brings it all back to the forefront of his mind, adding to the low-level churning in his gut. He sternly shoves it away for later.

“And if I leave with you, a _literal summoning party on their way to pray for the power to battle Sin_ , won’t I just be giving them more fuel for the fire?”

“No more than if you hang around one of Yevon’s strongholds,” Sasha retorts, which is an infuriatingly sensible response, even if she doesn’t know why she’s so right. All things considered, a temple dedicated to a religion that believes machina are evil and that Zanarkand is a ruined destination for holy pilgrimage that also happens to be full of fiends is probably the _least_ safe place for Martin right now.

Martin sighs, frustrated. “Does Jon even _want_ me to come? I don’t want to get in the way—”

“Don’t let Jon put you off. He’s not his best self when he’s stressed.” Sasha hesitates, a crack showing in her veneer. “I’d want you to come along, if you decide you’re up for it.”

“What?” Martin blurts out, a lot louder than he meant to, and with an effort pulls his voice back down. “Really?”

Sasha nods, looking surprised. “Yeah, why not? You have had –” 

She sighs, a wry smile on her face. “Look, let’s not mince words, you’ve been having the worst possible kind of day since we met, and you’ve been handling it really well, considering. You wouldn’t be out of place in a summoning party. The other stuff like the fighting’d come with time, and Tim and I could cover for you with that.”

Sasha makes a compelling argument. The warm, inviting smile she’s wearing helps. Martin dithers; he’s done a pretty good job, he thinks, of talking himself _out_ of wanting to go along, listing all of the very reasonable things that would make it a terrible idea. But Sasha – who actually has an idea of what Spira’s like, who belongs to an organisation whose mission is to throw itself cavalierly at Sin, who only just _met_ him – she thinks it’s a good idea.

It throws him off, in a way he doesn’t really like.

“I – I don’t know…” Martin starts, fidgeting anxiously. Movement out of the corner of his eye makes him turn; Jon is stalking back over in their direction on wobbly legs, Tim sauntering behind him with a face like the cat who got the cream. “Oh, no, here he comes.”

Jon comes to a halt a few steps away, looking up at Martin with a deep frown.

“Tim,” he says stiffly, after a moment’s thought, “has explained the situation. And. I suppose, if you want, you can come with us as far as Luca. If that’s what you want. Since it would be safer for you that way.”

It’s the least graceful, most grudging invitation Martin has ever heard in his life.

Maybe that’s why Martin suddenly finds himself seized with a spark of irritation that quickly flares into boldness, and he says:

“Yeah, why not. Um. Thanks?”

“Jon,” says the red-haired warrior guardian in a low voice.

Jon sighs. “It’s done, Daisy.” 

He looks at Martin doubtfully, the exhaustion setting back into his face with a vengeance. “I just hope I don’t regret this,” he mutters as he turns and staggers away. “Tim, he’s your problem.”

“Aye-aye, boss,” Tim grins, while Martin stands there trying not to feel stung.

Sasha nudges his arm gently.

“Fifty gil he’ll have changed his mind by the time we actually get to Luca,” she says absently, and winks at Martin. “We’ll call it a trial period for now. Welcome aboard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter:  
> \- swearing  
> \- canon-typical Martin's terrible childhood content  
> \- canon-typical Jon's inability to prioritise the care of himself  
> \- discussions of: violence  
> \- brief mentions of: threat, starvation, sacrifice, existential horror
> 
> (as always, lmk if i should've warned for something but didn't!)
> 
> for reference, [this is the Hymn of the Fayth.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSwzVnW2LhY) it's so pretty!
> 
> thanks again for reading, everyone!


	5. bravely forward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon summons an aeon. The pilgrimage heads south. Martin makes it through his first real fight, and learns another disturbing fact of Spiran life.

Martin wakes the next morning to an unfamiliar ceiling.

He opens his eyes, expecting to see the thin orange line of the streetlight glow on the old, flaky, spiderweb-cracked plaster of his bedroom; it almost jars him right out of his body when instead he sees dark stone above him, latticed through with borderline-delicate copper pipework.

He bolts upright, takes in the low wooden beds and equally low table, the thin rug on the floor, the wall hanging with its black eye symbol – and only then does he remember.

Sin. The weird swordsman who vanished into thin air. Zanarkand wreathed in fire and smoke, the beach, Tim and Sasha, his _dad_ , somehow winding up agreeing to play guardian for a summoner—

Martin buries his face in his hands for a second. Right. That was a thing that happened.

It’s very tempting to try and convince himself it’s not real. To just lie back down and go to sleep in the hope that next time he opens his eyes, he’ll see his bedroom ceiling and not the temple. 

But that’s not going to help anything, is it.

Martin counts to ten. Then he grabs his glasses, tries to make himself look at least half-way presentable, and finally grabs the pair of daggers sitting innocuously in their sheaths at the foot of his bed before he ventures out in search of Tim and Sasha.

The temple has no windows, which makes it impossible to tell what time it is. He hopes he hasn’t overslept or anything. Bad enough already that he’s an obvious outsider who has no idea what he’s doing without adding that into the mix.

After a few minutes of wandering and poking his head in every open doorway he passes, he spots Tim and Sasha sitting at a table inside what looks like a small mess room. They smile brightly when they meet his eyes, waving him over.

“Morning! We snagged you some breakfast,” Tim grins as he sits down, pushing a small bowl of rice and vegetables Martin’s way. “Don’t ask us where Jon and the other two are, ‘cause we don’t know either. We were gonna head outside and wait for them once we’re done here.”

“I haven’t held you up, have I?”

“What? Nah,” Tim says dismissively. “It’s probably still dark out there, I don’t even think half the priests are up yet.”

“That’ll probably change soon,” Sasha says pensively, sipping at a cup of tea she has cupped in both hands. “Seeing as how they’ll all want to see Jon summon.”

“ _Or_ we could just sneak away beforehand. They’d be none the wiser.”

Sasha gives Tim a look over the rim of her teacup. “You and I both know Jon won’t go for that. Always got something to prove, that one.”

“ _Ugh,_ I know. Let me dream, Sasha.”

“That’s a whole thing then, is it?” Martin asks. “Getting him to summon before we leave?”

“Honestly, I don’t even know,” Tim shrugs. “Something something symbolic renewal something something hope something. It’s all for show, really. The fayth already said yes and their opinions are the only ones that matter.”

“Would you like any more cynicism to go with your rice, Martin?” Sasha asks dryly, and nudges Tim with an elbow.

The remainder of breakfast passes by quickly. Tim and Sasha are all too obviously used to being a unit, and cheerfully banter at each other all the while with no need for Martin’s input. He finishes eating, and the three of them head for the main chamber via the quartermaster’s store, where a young-looking acolyte who doesn’t seem entirely awake yet helps outfit them with small, lightweight packs, enough to carry a bedroll and some small provisions without being too bulky or throwing them too off-balance. 

Martin wonders at the temple’s generosity for a few moments. Then he remembers what exactly they’re setting out on this journey to do, and things start to make sense. Stands to reason they’d want to do whatever they could to boost the chances of their success, however small.

Once they’re packed, they pass back through the dark, flickering entrance hall and out through the main doors. Outside, the temple and the rock surrounding it are bathed in the red light of the day’s beginning, the morning sun casting long shadows. A handful of people in robes – presumably more priests and acolytes – mill about in varying states of wakefulness, clearly waiting for something. 

Martin catches a few of them doing a double take when they catch sight of him and whispering to their fellows behind their hands. It makes him uneasy; part of him hopes he’s just a novelty after being washed up on the beach the way he was, but he can’t help feeling like maybe Father Edwin might be a bit of a gossip.

He is suddenly very, very glad that he won’t be staying at this temple.

After a few minutes of standing around and waiting, the temple doors open again, and a hush falls over those who have gathered as Jon and the two stern-looking warrior guardians from the night before step outside. Martin notices for the first time that everyone has arranged themselves so as to be standing in a loose sort of ring, leaving a wide, empty space in the centre. 

Jon steps forward into the midpoint of that space now, his mouth set into a severe, determined line. He looks _slightly_ less exhausted than the previous night, at least, though that isn’t saying much. He’s also holding a large, elaborate staff in both hands. It looks heavy, almost as tall as Jon himself, made out of some dark material that fans out at both top and bottom into some seriously embellished ornamentation, swirling motifs of that same eye-shape of Yevon that make the whole balance of the thing look _off_.

It looks like a fiendishly difficult thing to use, by all accounts, but if Jon is having any difficulty he must be putting his all into hiding that. He closes his eyes and lifts his face to the sky, raising the staff with both arms above his head before bringing it down directly in front of him. Lightning begins to build and flicker around him, sparking toward the staff, and when Jon lifts his arms slightly all of that sparking light snaps to the end of it in a great ball, streaks of it still arcing off.

Jon turns now, the staff sweeping out in front of him to throw that flickering ball of lightning ahead of him, where it vanishes into thin air. Or no, not quite; Martin thinks he sees some sort of glyph flash in mid-air for a split second, and then the air becomes _charged,_ a thin, unbroken arc of lightning stretching from the tip of Jon’s staff into some invisible hole in space.

For a few agonising moments, things stay that way. Jon’s look of concentration turns into one of strain, his stance taking on something fixed and rigid to it, like he’s locked into some tug-of-war he’s determined to win.

Then – _something_ appears. 

A large, twisted horn of ivory emerges out of empty space, inch by agonising inch. Then a great dark head, a flowing white mane, two massive, stout-looking hooves. Finally, with an effort, Jon yanks on his staff with both hands and pulls the aeon out into the world with a booming clap of thunder.

It’s a horse, or something like a horse. The colour of cobalt under moonlight, stocky and easily twice the size of any horse Martin’s ever imagined, with lightning sparking from its hooves with every step and that lethal-looking horn standing proud on its forehead. It tosses its head and unfurls a pair of mighty wings, each feather razor-sharp and scattering sparks with every movement.

It’s beautiful. It’s _terrifying._ Martin can feel every single hair on his body standing on end even from his safe distance; he doesn’t know how Jon can bear to stand so close to it. Jon does, though, his posture inflexible and ramrod-straight. He stares down the aeon with a tight-lipped look, and after a moment, inclines his head.

Martin’s beginning to see, now, why summoners are the ones everyone puts their faith in to challenge Sin.

A moment longer, and the aeon vanishes, leaping into mid-air and fading into a lazy cloud of glowing, soft-coloured orbs that gradually disperse upwards. Jon sighs, the set of his shoulders relaxing somewhat, and just like that, the whole energy of the gathered ring shifts. Martin can feel it; the stunned awe making room for a kind of low-level buzzing, hope that no one quite seems prepared to put into words.

“ _That’s_ an aeon?” Martin says, finally finding his voice again.

“That’s an aeon,” Sasha confirms. She sounds like she’s trying to be less affected than she actually is. “Something, isn’t it?”

 _Something_ is right. Martin is about the furthest thing from an expert you can get, but even just this one felt so powerful. The idea that Jon still has to travel in order to summon more of them is staggering.

He thinks of the thing that attacked Zanarkand, and just how powerful it must really be, and shivers.

“Come on, let’s join up with the others,” Tim says now, clapping Martin gently on the shoulder. “Might as well see if our fellow guardians are as boring as they seem to be.”

“ _Tim._ ”

“They’re warrior monks, Sasha,” Tim says, rolling his eyes. “Cheerless and married to the rules, every single one of them.”

They certainly seem cheerless enough when the three of them approach. The red-headed one, the one Jon called Daisy, has a greatsword strapped to her back, while her fellow guardian has a crossbow held in a sling over one shoulder, a quiver of bolts visible at her hip.

“Hi,” the crossbow-wielder says. Well, at least she doesn’t seem to mind speaking to them, even if she doesn’t seem much inclined to smile. “Guess we’ll be working together, then.”

“Guess so,” Sasha agrees with a smile. “We didn’t really get to talk much last night. I’m Sasha – this is Tim and Martin.”

“Basira,” she says with a nod. “This is my partner Daisy.”

“You two usually based up at Bevelle, then?” Tim asks lightly.

“Usually. We’ve had one or two assignments elsewhere. Nowhere so far afield as this, though.”

“Well, yeah,” Tim nods. “Suppose you’d never’ve had a reason to. The temple put you on this one?”

“It came direct from the Grand Maester,” Basira shrugs. Martin guesses that must be someone important. Maybe the head of Yevon, or something? “Kinda hard to argue with something like that, not that we would’ve.”

Basira casts a critical eye over Tim and Sasha, cocking her head in curiosity. “You two used to work as… what, scribes? Archivists? Before you left to join the Crusaders, I mean.”

“A bit of everything, really,” says Sasha. “You know the library, as soon as they find out you’ve got any kind of scholar’s background they decide that means everything you can do is transferable.”

Basira lets out a ghost of a laugh. “I was never a scholar, but sounds familiar, yeah.”

“How’d you know, anyway?”

“Jon’s talked about you a fair bit on the way down. Seemed like he was looking forward to seeing you.” 

While Tim and Sasha exchange a look, their faces softening, Basira turns to Martin.

“What about you?” she asks. “Is it true you came up against Sin before these guys found you?”

“Uh… yeah,” Martin says, feeling a bit uncomfortable at the scrutiny. “It’s all still a bit of a blur, to be honest.”

Basira blows out a slow breath, her eyebrows raising. “Lucky for you you made it out. Can you fight?”

“He’s a fast learner,” Tim cuts in.

“He better be,” Daisy says abruptly, drawing everyone’s eyes bar Basira’s. “Fiends don’t care if you’ve got a famous father.”

Irritation surges through Martin like a flame. What does that have to do with anything? Why is it any of her business?

“ _He_ is standing right here and can speak for himself, thanks,” he says tartly. “I can’t – I can’t fight _well_ , if that’s what you mean, we can’t all be warrior monks. But like Tim said, I can learn.”

Tim, as it happens, is standing there grinning at this like the turn of the year’s come early. Daisy raises an eyebrow. Before she can say anything - if she was even planning on saying anything - Jon comes sweeping toward them, with all the look of an escapee from somewhere who’s sure their trail’s being followed.

“Is everyone ready?” he asks shortly, sounding a little out of breath.

“Ready and waiting, boss,” Tim says with a little salute.

“Don’t call me that. The priests here have been bad enough, I don’t need that sort of nonsense from you as well.”

Ah. So it’s the priests he’s escaping from.

“Sure thing, boss,” Tim nods with an unrepentant smile.

“ _Tim._ ”

“Sorry!” Tim grins, laughing in the face of Jon’s fairly impressive scowl. “You still make it way too easy, you know.”

“I’ve already forgotten why I missed you,” Jon mutters, bending to pick up a pack lying near Daisy and Basira’s feet. “Come on. Before I get trapped in yet _another_ conversation.”

Fortunately for Jon, that doesn’t happen. Whether the sight of him being surrounded by guardians is signal enough that their journey is now underway, or whether the sight of Daisy is just that intimidating to anyone who might otherwise try their luck, they manage to leave Djose temple without any further interruptions.

Daisy takes the lead as they begin to cross the old bridge leading over the river and out of the ravine. Basira takes the rear in what must be a long-standing arrangement, which leaves the remaining four of them to bundle themselves together somewhere in the middle.

Martin isn’t really sure where to put himself. He finally settles for walking a little behind the other three, figuring that out of everyone here, he knows the least about where they are and where they’re going. 

No one else seems to object, and like that, their journey is underway.

~ ⛼ ~

Tim and Sasha provide most of the conversation for that first stretch of road. After so long without seeing their friend, they’re understandably eager to catch up with Jon, telling stories of their exploits with the Crusaders down in this part of Spira while pressing Jon for news of his journey south, and any gossip from their hometown they haven’t already heard. That said, they seem just as happy with rehashing old gossip from years ago whenever Jon is either unable or unwilling to provide them anything new.

Martin tunes out, a little; it’s not that any of them seem to care about him hearing them, or that he’s not interested, but it feels awkward listening in on things he has no frame of reference for, no real understanding of. Like a kid leaning over the edge of a stairwell to eavesdrop on what the adults are talking about the next floor down. Better to let them catch up in relative peace.

Still, it’s hard not to pick up the odd word here and there, and when they start talking in-depth about some part of the temple where they all used to work, Martin is too curious not to ask, “How many temples were there, again?”

The three of them start, almost like they’d forgotten he was there for a bit.

“Whoops,” Tim says sheepishly. “Sorry, Martin, we’ve been getting carried away up here.”

“What? Oh, no, it’s fine, you’ve not seen each other in ages. I was just thinking, it’d probably be better if you fill me in on some stuff? Since, you know,” he waves a hand at himself, “we probably don’t have time to wait for the toxin to wear off on its own.”

Tim, Sasha, and Jon look at each other.

“I suppose it’s not a bad idea,” Jon says grudgingly, levelling an appraising look at him. 

Between the three of them, they explain. 

There are five temples in total – the one they’ve just left behind, two some distance further north, and two located in an island chain some way to the south – each with their own fayth. Aeons and fayth, Jon makes a point of stressing when Martin asks, being very different things, apparently. Aeons like the one Jon summoned this morning are the dreams of a particular fayth given a physical form in the world by the bond formed between a fayth and a summoner.

“The fayth has to be favourable,” Jon explains with a frown that makes Martin think he may have learned that lesson the hard way when he faced the one inside Djose temple. He rubs the left side of his neck absently, fingers worrying under the high collar of his undershirt. “The temples insist on calling it _praying_ but honestly, it’s more akin to… a pact.”

“Okay,” Martin nods, trying to wrap his head around this. The way they’ve described it to him, it sounds like it goes beyond any kind of pact Martin’s ever heard of. Less something made with words and more something… deeper than that. Soul-deep, even. “So… why start with the one at Djose? I mean, if you lived in Bevelle anyway…”

“I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not that simple.”

“Okay, why not?”

“Because we don’t want Jon to fry his brain trying to bite off more than he can chew,” Tim says blithely.

“That’s _not_ how it works, Tim.”

“Close enough from what I heard,” Tim shrugs, looking a little more serious now. “All those stories of cocky idiots trying their luck and never waking up again, or coming out of it unable to cast magic, or just losing their minds. You know, if the fayth even talks to them in the first place. I heard sometimes they just don’t bother if they don’t think the summoner’s got what it takes.”

“They’re not – those stories can’t all be true, though, can they?” Martin asks weakly, feeling a little ill. 

He already figured out that a summoner’s lot couldn’t be easy – they have to choose to go on a journey to fight _Sin_ , for goodness’ sake – but the idea of there being such a risk involved even when just trying to do the exact thing they set out to do is almost too much to contemplate. 

“ _Tim_ is exaggerating,” Jon says, shooting a disapproving look Tim’s way. He hesitates for a moment, and adds, “Mostly. Some of those stories may have a grain of truth hidden in all the sensationalism. The fayth _are_ powerful – some far more than others. The ones in Bevelle and Macalania have been known to overwhelm summoners who tried to pact with them unprepared.”

“Which is why you even have the pilgrimage in the first place,” Sasha adds. “To let Jon build his strength to prepare for being bonded mind, body, and soul to more and more powerful fayth.”

“Yes, _thank you_ , you two,” says Jon testily.

Martin thinks about the state Jon was in last night when he emerged from the cloister, and about how powerful that first aeon felt when he summoned it outside the temple. If the fayth in Djose is supposed to be one of the _easier_ ones…

“It must be hard.”

Jon shoots him a sharp look. It turns to something more contemplative after a moment, though, as he says dismissively, “I knew what I was getting into.” 

“… Sure,” Martin says. “So, where does Zanarkand fit into all of it? I mean – it’s a ruin, right?”

Saying those words still hasn’t lost any of its strangeness yet.

Jon stares at him, a look of deep scepticism on his face. “Are you sure it’s just your memory the toxin affected?” 

Wow. Martin was trying to be generous, putting everything about the way Jon spoke to him last night down as extreme exhaustion from his ordeal with the fayth, but it seems like Jon just really is that rude. 

“ _Yes,_ it’s a ruin,” Jon continues shortly, “but it also happens to be where the Final Aeon is located. The one that grants enough power to stop Sin.”

Somehow, Martin can hear the capital letters in the words Final Aeon just from how Jon says it. He tries for a moment to imagine what such a powerful aeon could look like, but something else about it strikes him as odd.

“How’d it end up there of all places?”

“The records have been lost,” Jon says, as if it’s some sort of personal affront. “Unfortunately. They say the first summoner to defeat Sin was from Zanarkand; perhaps that’s why.”

Martin very much doubts that. If his time travel theory is right - and while he's got no _proof_ , he’s got no reason to believe it isn’t yet – _his_ Zanarkand is completely devoid of summoners, or aeons, or fayth. There’s always been a little magic hanging in the air, sure, but… nothing like the raw power he felt coming from Jon’s aeon outside the temple before. 

Maybe the summoners came along later? If Sin first appeared a thousand years ago, and the whole reason summoners exist is to fight it, then…

Except that doesn’t make sense either, because Tim and Sasha seemed convinced that Sin first showed up after this Machina War he keeps hearing about, and Martin definitely doesn’t remember _anything_ like that. Not even the whisperings of it. 

Trying to sort this out is going to give him a headache. 

With an effort, he pulls himself back to the conversation, just in time to hear Tim say, “Which is fantastic for us, seeing as how the place is crawling with fiends.”

“The endurance training’s not just for Jon, you know,” says Sasha. “Anyway, we’re months away from seeing Zanarkand yet. Let’s focus on getting to Luca in one piece first.”

Luca, the only city in southern Spira and the next properly settled place on their road, is apparently about a month’s walk from where they are now. The thought of being on the road for that long is more than a little daunting. Martin is relieved to hear that most of it is doable via Spira’s main highroad, and so much easier to navigate than what he’d been imagining.

By now, they’ve long left the secluded, sheltered ravine of Djose temple behind them, and have been making sure progress down a worn-down old dirt road winding along the coastline. The view isn’t any more inspiring on foot than it was from the back of a cart; but suddenly, Daisy stiffens from her place at the front, holding a mailed fist up by her head in warning.

“Heads up,” she says in a low voice. “Incoming on our right.”

“I see them,” Basira answers from the back. When Martin turns, she’s loading her crossbow, preparing to fire.

“Get ready,” Tim mutters, spinning one of his axes in hand. Sasha stands by him, one of her books floating at chest height in front of her. The two of them have moved to form a protective front ahead of Jon now, ready for whatever’s coming.

Martin draws his daggers, his heart hammering. 

When it comes, it all happens very fast. Two shaggy, snarling creatures with maws of jagged teeth spring down from above them. One yelps, thrown on its back to the ground as Basira’s shot whistles overhead and finds its mark. Daisy runs straight to the other with her greatsword raised, shouting to draw its attention.

“Sasha!” Tim shouts – Martin’s head whips back to where the one Basira hit is back on its feet, coming at them with a limp that doesn’t slow it down. Sasha’s face is set in concentration – she mutters under her breath, and a bright gout of flame explodes in the creature’s fur and fills the air with the rancid smell of burning hair. Tim presses forward, sinks one axe deep into its side, and up rises a cloud of lazy, hazy pastel lights as the bulk of the thing vanishes into nothing.

It all happened so fast. Daisy gets to her feet in the middle of her own cloud of lights, grimacing as she examines her right arm.

“Damn thing got me,” she grunts. Sure enough, there’s a dark red stain spreading on the cloth between her elbow and shoulder, right in the gap where her armour doesn’t cover. Apart from the grimace still set on her face, she barely seems bothered otherwise, casting her eyes over everyone else instead.

“Anyone else get hit?”

“I mean, it was five against one over here,” Sasha says with a raised eyebrow. “So no, we’re fine.”

“Which is more than can be said for you,” Jon adds, brushing past Tim and Sasha with a frown to take Daisy’s arm. “Let me take care of that before we keep going.”

Feeling a little dazed, Martin sheathes his knives. One part of him is just relieved that he didn’t have to use them. On the other hand – he didn’t even _do_ anything. Everyone else did the work.

“It wasn’t really five against one, was it,” he mutters to Sasha, watching light welling up below Jon’s palm as he stares intensely at Daisy’s arm. Healing magic, he realises. Like the kind that weird swordsman used on him when Sin attacked Zanarkand.

“You didn’t run,” Sasha shrugs. “That’s always a good start. Trust me, there’ll be plenty of chances to fight fiends before we reach Luca.”

~ ⛼ ~

It swiftly turns out that Sasha wasn’t just saying that to appease him. 

Now that they are out on the open road, away from the sheltered, easily defensible path leading to and from the temple, it soon becomes clear just how exposed they are. The remainder of their journey that day is fraught with skirmishes with things taking the twisted forms of insects, or birds, or in one memorable instance, a creeping, frozen mass that blows stinging flurries of hail and ice in their direction. Every time, Martin feels the fear lance through his gut; and every time, it’s over quicker than he can think, each encounter becoming a blur of moving and reacting.

Most of the time, the fiends don’t get near him – he has the annoying feeling that Tim and Sasha are trying to make sure of that. But every so often Daisy doesn’t spot one in time, or they’re forced to dodge somewhere out the way, and Martin finds himself in a confusing tangle that he barely remembers afterwards, of trying to hit without being hit himself, struggling to keep anything Tim and Sasha showed him in his head long enough to use it.

“I’m telling you, don’t overthink it,” Tim advises him that night as they sit around their little campfire. Daisy’s found them a sheltered overhang just off the main road to make a camp in, easily defensible if whoever’s on watch spots something coming for them in the night. So she says, anyway; Martin figures he doesn’t have much choice but to take her word for it.

“How come there are so many fiends out here around Djose, anyway?” Martin asks. 

He hadn’t lied, back when he told Tim that it was a big deal whenever one showed up back home. The appearance of a fiend in Zanarkand was something few and far between, and always big news as the guard were called out to take it down. The rumours about what it was and where it came from would get passed round for _weeks._

Sasha sighs heavily. 

“Too many people dying without a Sending,” she says. “Their spirits can’t make it to the Farplane without help, and without that help they just end up… hanging around, getting more and more bitter about it until eventually they’re so overcome with envy and hate that they become fiends and start going after the living.”

They’re _people?_

Martin doesn’t know what a Sending is, or the Farplane, but the idea that the monsters they just fought all day are _people_ —

“Wait, so—”

“They don’t even remember who they used to be,” Tim says, staring with a grim look into the embers of their little fire. “Trust me, taking them out is a mercy for everyone involved.”

Tim would know better than Martin. But that doesn’t do much for the sick surge of pity at the bottom of his chest.

“Poor things,” he says softly. “Is there really nothing else we could do?”

“Technically, Jon could Send them,” Sasha says thoughtfully. With a wry smile, she adds, “But you’ve probably figured out that we wouldn’t have the time for that before they were at our throats.”

Martin stays quiet. He still can’t quite figure out what a Sending is – some sort of ritual for the dead, maybe? – but the truth about fiends rattles around his head for the rest of the night, haunting his thoughts.

It’s some time before he’s able to sleep that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter:  
> \- ffx-typical levels of violence and threat (fighting your typical JRPG videogame-style monsters)  
> \- minor blood and injury (quickly taken care of bc healing magic exists)  
> \- existential horror  
> \- discussions of: death, undeath, hypothetical serious mental and physical injury
> 
> (as always, let me know if i missed something that should be warned for)
> 
> thanks for reading!


End file.
